Smoke and Crimson
by greyrondo
Summary: Sebastian has one inexplicable goal for this trip to London and it's only somewhat impossible . But thirty years have passed, and the human world has become a very different place, both for those who live in it and those who have to clean up afterwards.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

_Smoke and Crimson _is rated M for sex, violence, and drugs (just kidding about that last one, Lau's not in this fic.)

All that Sebastian wants to do is pick up where he left off about thirty years ago. But starting a major world conflict isn't the best way to make a good second impression on someone who you might have written off too early (and let them know about it. No one said Sebastian was good about this sort of thing.) The problem is, Sebastian's family is concerned about his wellbeing and wants to have more of a say in his personal life, and they can be judgmental at times, especially when they think he should be doing better things with his demonic free time, like replacing humanity's faith in God with something a little less traditional and a little more fallible… like humans who would very much like to play God.

If you've read my work before, you might notice the style's a little different. Please enjoy, and please tell me what you think!

~greyrondo

**Smoke and Crimson, Chapter One**

The first thing that Sebastian thought when he stepped out onto the streets of London was that he needed to find something more appropriate to wear.

Even if his clothes weren't singed by hellfire—an unfortunate side effect that most demons avoided by changing their physical form every time they trotted up to the surface—they were still about thirty years out of date.

Some demons thought that wearing the clothes of bygone eras lent them a sort of air of immortal credibility, evidence that they'd been around for ages past and would still be doing their thing for ages more. For example, Marchosias insisted on dressing like the Emperor Nero. But that was why he wasn't getting back the seventh throne of Hell anytime soon.

This wasn't the first time Sebastian had walked amongst the humans in three decades—he'd just had supper a few years ago—but this was the first time he'd done so without a contract since he went on his diet.

It was bound to get to him eventually. Demons who gorged themselves on junk souls were perfectly happy just eating, showing Heaven just how corruptible humans were, and frolicking about in the brimstone. But once Sebastian had started taking more care towards what he ate, he found himself wanting to devote the same amount of attention to the quality of the rest of his life. Eternity, was, after all, a rather long time to spend doing nothing but spiting God. He deserved the chance to have his own identity.

There was, first of all, the question of his name. Beings who weren't demons just didn't understand how much rode on a demon's name: it was identity; it was what humans used for invocation and their claim to everything they've done worth writing home about.

The average demon on the street would do anything for his real name. But he liked 'Sebastian' better, just like he liked this specific physical form. And besides, he would be wasting his time wandering around like this if he looked any different or insisted on using his real name.

Who was he kidding—he was wasting his time either way. He didn't even know why he was here.

Which was, by the way, a total lie.

Demons were supposed to be deceivers, but when it came to lying to himself, he realized he was dreadfully out of practice. He hadn't really lied that much when he was last in London—except for when it counted, which was why he was here now—and there hadn't been much time for anything with his last meal. Ciel might have needed a guardian, but all that Gavril Princip required was a little supernatural can-do attitude.

Few humans knew that the saying 'you are what you eat' came from Sebastian's cousin Asmodeus, who'd said it to one of his meals and it caught on. The problem with eating only the finest souls every few years or decades, instead of scheduling them between filler souls, was that Sebastian was starting to feel rather…human.

So he was doing something human.

(In Hell, 'human' was occasionally used as a synonym for 'incredibly stupid'.)

First things first: clothes. He was determined to restore some sense of practicality.

One convenient thing about humans was that they liked to get drunk every so often. It took half an hour for him to narrow the selection down, but Sebastian had been given his choice of several different suits and in the end he chose a plain black wool that was more or less an updated version of the same silhouette as what he had worn as Ciel's butler, but without the peculiarities of livery.

But wearing a nicely tailored black didn't do much for anonymity, and while Germany was quickly becoming the place to be, London was still very much a scene.

"Excellent work," a ten-year old boy said to him on the street. "Couldn't have done a better job myself."

Sebastian glared at the boy as he ran off, pretending to deliver the evening edition of the paper but really searching for a snack. Azazel.

His second cousin Dantalion winked at him, while Procel and Bal both stopped him to shake his hand. It wasn't until Alocer asked where he had been lately and inquired after his health that Sebastian finally figured out that even for a brisk night in London, there were too many high-ranking demons in one place.

Then he had a sudden dreadful sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, comparable to what most humans feel at the mere suggestion of spending any significant time with their in-laws. His dear aunt Lilith never went anywhere without an entourage, and being the great entertainer that she was, she loved to throw supper parties.

Demons, of course, rarely ate together. But while gossiping about the quality of a meal afterwards would be downright unseemly in human high society (at least, before the age of the television and the cooking shows with shameless panels of judges), it was a favorite pastime in Hell.

Even though he would have politely refused the invitation anyways, it still mattered that he hadn't been invited. That meant that he was doing something that aunt Lilith didn't like.

"And here I was, thinking I had built up enough credit to be left alone for half a century or so," Sebastian murmured to himself. His kin hadn't been congratulating him for nothing, after all. But he had priorities, and even if he didn't know if he had the courage to follow through with them, he wanted the freedom to procrastinate properly without this becoming some sort of overly complicated family affair, with everything blown out of proportion. His diet had already caused enough of a fuss as it is.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he stood in the midst of the darker, uglier side of London. And he smelled blood, but there was something off about it.

Then again, there was also something rather off about the substantial hole in the warehouse ceiling, not to mention the haphazard way that everything seemed to be scattered about.

"Don't you have a kiss for auntie?"

Sebastian looked up, and saw a woman whose very fashionable, very expensive dress was soaked halfway through with something dark and smelling of iron. More blood.

He smiled thin. "I thought you were in the area, Lilith, so I wanted to say hello."

"What are you doing here?" Lilith smirked, tossing her very human hair back as she shed the dress, the skin, the façade. Sebastian flinched at her true form. It was most improper for polite society, but the real reason the sight of an unmasked demon offended him was because it reminded him that what he was wearing, too, was nothing more than a shell. A suit in a suit.

"Has my sweet nephew finally decided to rejoin the rest of his family? I thought you were too good for us. First you take it upon yourself to try and eat better than Lucifer himself, and then you act all high and mighty by staying away from court after that little skirmish you started. Sure, your brothers and sisters and cousins might be all impressed, but you'll have to do better than that if you want to start putting on airs and playing human again…"

"You've been having me watched," Sebastian said, fighting to keep his voice cool. "I'm sorry that my activities have been so boring, then. Next time, I'll choose a soul that requires me to have a more exciting occupation."

Lilith smirked. "Why would you want to hide anything from your dear auntie? I only want what's best for you… especially when you don't know yourself. I've made some guesses as to why you're here. But would you like to know why I'm here?"

At that, Sebastian folded his arms over his chest. "I have a feeling you're going to tell me."

"I'm eating. I'm living, not surviving, like you. Do you think I want to watch my nephew starve to death?"

"I'm not going to starve to death, Lilith," Sebastian sighed, and momentarily buried his face in one of his hands for patience. Really, who had heard of a demon starving to death?

He looked up again, and this time paid more attention to the dark strain on Lilith's shoulder. It remained even after she shed her human skin, so it was her blood after all. Who had heard of a demon getting gouged up like that while having supper?

"How did you get that wound…?" he wanted to know.

"Oh darling, As—"

"Don't call me that. I don't want to hear it. Ever again."

He might as well have slapped her in the face and invoked the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit afterwards, for the way that Lilith flinched.

"What," she said breathlessly when she had recovered. "Would really rather me use that name your _afternoon tea_ bestowed upon you? You want to be human so much?"

"I don't want to be human—"

"Would you prefer Mr. Michaelis? Is that too formal? Maybe just Sebastian…or how about," she said with a laugh, "something even cuter? Like Sebby?"

That was the last thing he wanted to hear right now. "I'd prefer you call me Sebastian. But really, I'd rather you not be around to call me anything at all," he glowered. "Go back to Hell—"

"Hush now," Lilith said, waving her hand dismissively. "There's no need for you to over-exert yourself… Sebastian. And we both know that you need to conserve your energy; who knows where your next meal's coming from? I, on the other hand, know that a perfectly acceptable snack will call to me in a matter of hours, and with it a much more challenging game than this last one provided, although perhaps not as interesting. It's not every day that someone calls on a demon requesting revenge on death itself…_Au revoir_, my fussy little nephew."

Revenge on death itself, Sebastian turned over in his thoughts as Lilith disappeared in a flash of glinting darkness. By the stench of sulfur, she hadn't lied to him when she said she intended to return to Hell.

He heard sounds. Voices—human voices. They filtered in from the front of the warehouse. This much destruction probably would have attracted attention sooner or later. It would be better for him to leave through the back.

Sebastian picked his way through the rubble in the half-darkness. If it weren't for the glint of moonlight striking a pair of glasses, he might not have even noticed Lilith's victim.

Now the strangeness in the smell of blood made sense. He hadn't been able to name it before, but it had been earthier than a human's, like the scent of stonework after rain.

It certainly explained how Lilith had received that wound.

But Lilith must have gotten a hold of the reaper's scythe to do that much damage, Sebastian thought in dulled uneasiness as he looked over his shoulder and traced the path of blood that he had been accidentally following.

That, and the fact that Sebastian didn't recognize the reaper, made him decide that either this must have been a very young Grim Reaper and that Lilith hadn't taken her contract very seriously, or that he was a reaper that Sebastian hadn't had the bad luck of running into and Lilith had taken her contract far too seriously.

It would be bad if the reapers became involved in this stupid family argument, but he didn't believe that Lilith would care about the repercussions. She would probably enjoy the thought of more drama in the afterlife.

And it would be awkward if he got personally involved. But in the overall balance of things, an injured reaper in a demon's care was better than a dead reaper. Even though he didn't have a clear idea of where he could possibly go with a wounded reaper, Sebastian slipped his arms underneath the reaper's shoulders and legs and lifted him from the ground.

Plain black cloak, black pinstriped suit underneath. With the Grim Reaper's hair a dull brown and jaggedly cut—on a whim, it looked like—above his shoulders, Sebastian didn't even realize until the Grim Reaper gave a pallid whimper that he was wrong.

Not about the injuries. If anything, Sebastian knew that he didn't have much time. This reaper was really, truly going to die.

It was just that Sebastian knew this reaper after all.

It wasn't too late for Sebastian to change his mind. He was a demon, after all. It was practically expected of him to find someone dying, kick them in the ribs, and leave them there, and probably toss a maniacal laugh in there somewhere just for good measure.

Self-loathing wasn't really something demons did in their free time, but Sebastian knew he was going to hate himself this time tomorrow night.

About thirty years ago, Sebastian made a bad decision. A bad decision for a demon wasn't the same as a bad decision for a human, but both species would agree that either way, Sebastian had wandered to the surface of the Earth solely because of that bad decision and he'd been kidding himself every time he told himself otherwise.

Because about thirty years ago, Sebastian might or might not have slept with a Grim Reaper. He knew which one it was, of course. So did the Grim Reaper.

There was nothing wrong with demons sleeping with other species, although everyone in Hell automatically assumed that any demon claiming to have slept with an angel was trying to make a (tiresome) political statement.

But relationships were an exclusively human thing. Everyone knew that with an angel, there was just no way to make room for God without feeling jealous, and demons sometimes forgot that they weren't dealing with a meal (his less than heartwarming relationship with his aunt was proof of that).

And since reapers were the designated neutrals between Heaven and Hell, there was no way to keep the job separated from personal life.

There wasn't much he could have done back then: he had sworn himself entirely to Ciel under a contract, and Ciel would have seen anything Sebastian might have done as betrayal, what with Ciel's aunt's death and all. That, and Sebastian didn't really know what he had been doing (for the record, he guessed that the reaper didn't really know what he was doing, either).

Lust was one thing, and that was what he had written it off as to Belial and Valafar and, of course, aunt Lilith, which didn't make Sebastian feel better about the entire thing at all. Because he wasn't quite sure if it was lust, or something more human. It was nice to feel wanted, even though he was a demon. No, in spite of the fact that he was a demon. That was something that humans never thought about when envisioning hellfire and sulfur. It was lonely.

"Grell," Sebastian said quietly, clinging a little tighter than he thought he was. "It would be best if you didn't die; I don't even know if Grim Reapers' souls are edible."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

Now that introductions are out of the way, I'd like to talk about the direction in which this fic goes. The timeline of this fic spans about sixty years, from the time when Sebastian and Grell initially met during the Jack the Ripper murders (I like to place that in the fall of 1888) to the aftermath of World War II. And because Kuroshitsuji leans towards the supernatural, this fic involves creative interpretations of the events leading to World War II.

The specifics of this disclaimer won't make sense until later, but I want to go ahead and say it now so it's addressed before I forget. Namely, I don't actually believe in the business that, in this fic's alternate version of history, motivated the political events in Europe throughout this time period (demons may not care if they're brushing on sensitive material, but I do).

Please enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

~greyrondo

**Smoke and Crimson: Chapter Two**

In better light, Grell's suit turned out to be a charcoal and merlot pinstripe, which was a relief. For a moment, Sebastian had been truly worried. He had quickly made his way into a quieter, sleepier, safer part of the city, but that was the limit of his planning ahead.

Random alleyways, as suspicious as they were, didn't really have right sort of feng shui for the black arts. But this one would have to do. With some semblance of a balance between haste and care, Sebastian laid Grell onto the ground and knelt over him, settling on top of Grell's hips. Death was running out of time.

"Honestly, could you be any less interested in your own survival?" Sebastian bantered lightly as he curled his spine, leaning over Grell's chest. "You're not even begging for me to save you."

Listening to him, a passerby wouldn't think that Sebastian cared much either way—never mind that a passerby would be quite alarmed at the way Sebastian's palms glowed with dark hellfire as they forced the suit's mutilated jacket and vest from Grell's waist and shoulders. Sebastian was paralyzed with both the apparent reality that Grell would go so quietly, and the very real appearance of bloodied skin and pools of darkness through the once-white shirt. The light wasn't good enough for red; Sebastian saw only black.

But he must have said something right, for Grell finally stirred. Except all he did was bite into his lower lip—resulting in even more blood—and make an attempt to bat away Sebastian's hands. Not in resignation, but in something that seemed oddly like fear, if Sebastian didn't know any better.

"Don't waste your energy worrying," Sebastian said then. "I'm not the demon who attacked you; don't be ridiculous. It's me. It's…Sebastian. Sebby," he added with a delicate wince.

But even then, Grell was still confused. He shook his head vehemently, and murmured emphatically something that sounded distinctly like, "Get away from me."

Sebastian sighed. "We don't have time for this," he decided, and muttered under his breath in Latin while forcing Grell's hands down onto the pavement. Magic bound them there.

An array of symbols and concentric circles surrounded them both. Contrary to popular belief, the black arts weren't just for spiteful things like turning toddlers into toadstools or cursing someone's cauliflower. They could be used for healing purposes, but just went about things a different way.

A different way that would make the average Sunday church service faint in their pews.

Buttons were a hassle, and Sebastian decided that with all the holes gouged into the material anyways, Grell wouldn't want this shirt afterwards. "Isn't this something like what you always wanted?" Sebastian mused out loud as he brushed Grell's hair back with one hand, more to reassure the reaper than for any real purpose, and lightly burning through the fabric of the shirt with the other.

His fingertips brushed the shirt aside, never leaving the reaper's warm skin as he remembered the time before he had ever touched Grell, and believed a Grim Reaper's flesh to be as cold as Death was commonly personified.

Sebastian thought that the concepts of hot and cold were strange ones. The flush of skin, as fiery as it was, felt nothing like the flare of hellfire. The coolness of night, while just as chilly, seemed to work almost in opposition to a frigid heart.

He bent down and brushed his lips and tongue along the wound jaggedly running beneath Grell's collarbone. It was a good thing he ate a few years ago, but even so, he would need a short nap after this. Since Grim Reapers didn't bleed as easily as humans or even angels, they didn't heal as easily, either.

Grell gave a shocked gasp, exposing the points of his teeth, and even though he couldn't move his arm, his fingers curled into a tight, unwilling fist. "Stop it," he breathed, and when Sebastian pulled back, he saw that Grell had opened his eyes and his gaze had caught aflame with indignant wrath comparable to an archangel's.

It was an entirely inappropriate time for Sebastian to imagine what it would feel like for those teeth to delicately drag along his own collarbone. "You don't understand what's going on, do you…?" Sebastian murmured, hiding the somewhat heartbroken disbelief that Grell didn't recognize him. "Just lay back and accept it. It will be over soon."

The chemistry behind holy magic was particularly toxic to demons, with all that glorious light and immaculate purity and whatnot infused with the spells. Demonic magic depended on something wholly more physical.

The gouge in Grell's collarbone had already healed, but that didn't do much for him. Sebastian grazed his palms over Grell's bare shoulders, reminding himself that now was not the time to linger. He continued over Grell's chest until his fingertips hovered on the inside of where the reaper's ribs would be, if Sebastian didn't have the distinct impression that at least two had been bruised, if not broken. His touch laid the path that the magic would have to travel.

It was just about when Sebastian's palms stopped just to the inside of Grell's hips that he noticed a thin silver line defiantly running down Grell's cheek.

Sebastian pulled back. He had quite a nagging feeling about this. Which he wasn't supposed to have. He was saving Grell's life. Or existence; whatever it was that Grim Reapers chose to call it. And honestly, some of his brethren would kill for the chance to either figuratively or literally screw Death over.

"Grell," he commanded lightly, "open your mouth. Just a little…for now."

Sebastian's lips hovered for a breath over the soft skin on his wrist; it was only after Grell lightly shook his head once that he bit into his flesh and tasted copper and sulfur.

Pressing the tip of his thumb against Grell's lips did nothing to convince the reaper that following his advice was a good idea. Blood trickled down Sebastian's hand and rolled off Grell's lips like incandescent crimson sin.

"You don't want to die, now, do you, Grell?" Sebastian teased as he wedged an obsidian nail between the first two razor-sharp teeth. It was better than letting the reaper know how uncertain he was. "Hmm…?"

He didn't think he had asked Grell to start shaking too, but Grell's mouth parted submissively. Sebastian watched his blood roll off his porcelain skin onto the reaper's tongue, and then somehow it turned in on itself to Sebastian watching the reaper's tongue curl slightly to catch his blood.

"You'll want to swallow, too," Sebastian said lightly.

Grell lips closed tight over Sebastian's thumb as he complied; Sebastian tilted his hand to cup Grell's chin. "There," Sebastian murmured. "That wasn't so hard, was it? Wider, now. You're going to have more."

Sebastian pulled back a little and settled his wrist over Grell's mouth; the reaper's tongue waited, and then reluctantly licked the blood clean. After Grell's mouth had parted a little, Sebastian withdrew his hand and kissed the wound on his wrist closed, imagining he could taste Grell on his skin as he did.

To say that Grell looked intoxicated with near-death and panic would be an understatement. Sebastian wondered why Grell hadn't yet caught on to the fact that Sebastian was the demon doing this for him.

Or to him, Sebastian corrected silently. He began the Latin again. It was mostly pointless, a human construction used as a tool to aid the magic. But even though he didn't need it, he wanted to depend on its methodical order.

"You know what's going to happen now, don't you," Sebastian said quietly. "You know how magic like this works. I've already introduced an element of my own being into your body—the blood. You know it didn't have to be blood."

It would all turn out fine. Grell would recover, come to his senses, and then Sebastian would hate himself for the rest of eternity because there would be no getting rid of the reaper after this. Grell would shadow him until Judgment Day.

Grell's lips parted, and it wasn't until much, much later, when Sebastian felt like there was nothing he could do but look backwards, did Sebastian realize that Grell had meant to say something then, something that could have warned Sebastian about the aftermath.

But some time later, when Sebastian pulled away, sticky with sweat and drugged with exhaustion—he might as well have given Gavrilo Princip's soul straight to Death, he had sacrificed so much of his energy to bolster Grell's faltering body—he did have some faint notion tugging beneath his thoughts. He was a demon who dreamt of being human, but he wasn't a complete idiot.

The silver line traced from the corner of Grell's eye to his jaw was no longer alone. Suddenly, the sight of them offended Sebastian to his very core, and he brushed his sleeve against each of Grell's cheeks. As he did it, he felt something less than pleasant pulling at his limbs that echoed of shame. But that wasn't quite the right word; was it remorse?

Then he heard something less than pleasant. It was a chuckle that sounded oddly like a death rattle.

"So this is where he wandered off to…although it's now obvious that he didn't wander off of his own accord…"

Sebastian and the Undertaker's only exchange of greetings was a long and stony silence, one during which Sebastian took Grell in his arms and stood up. He would have been the last person to call his stance confrontational, but that's what it was.

"What have I done to charm your sense of humor?" Sebastian asked, his voice clipped and artificially playful. He didn't know how long the Undertaker had been there.

"Well, this is the first time you've made me laugh before you've even told me what you're looking for; you must have been practicing in the thirty years you disappeared. I didn't think I'd see you around here again, to say the least…"

"What are you doing here…?"

"Hah. I should be asking you, shouldn't I? I find it nothing short of hilarious that you've shown your face, especially in this situation. And you know that all I live—or whatever it is that I do—for is a good laugh…I'm looking for him, and now I've found him. What are you waiting for?"

Sebastian smiled halfway. "I don't know, Undertaker; what am I waiting for?"

"You had better bring the punch line of your joke with you," the Undertaker said vaguely, pointing to Grell momentarily before walking off. "Carry him for me and I'll add it to your credit…"

Playing follow-the-leader with the Undertaker led Sebastian on a tour of a handful of thread-thin alleyways, a few steps into an unlit, cramped, and dusty foyer, up a flight of stairs, and into a room that was reasonably comfortable and prior to Sebastian and Grell's entrance, unoccupied but obviously someone's home.

There was a bed, a dark fireplace, a few bookshelves, a desk. A full-length mirror. Nothing too far out of the ordinary.

Sebastian's plan was to let Grell sleep off the invasion of demonic magic he just endured (among other things), but since the Undertaker kept finding excuses to come upstairs and burst into muffled laughter at random intervals, Sebastian had the suspicion that there was something incredibly important that the Undertaker knew and wasn't telling him.

Finally, he had to ask.

"Why are you helping me?" Sebastian wanted to know, as the Undertaker lifted Grell's wrist and let it drop. He doubted that was proper diagnostic procedure.

"Better here than in Hell," the Undertaker answered musingly. "That's what you're thinking, isn't it? That's why you're hovering over him, hm? He'll be fine, you can scurry on back to your pit now if you like…"

"Actually, I have something I'd like to talk to him about, but he was dying. I decided it could wait until he was feeling more like himself," Sebastian said with narrowed eyes. Thirty years had also painted a much more patient picture of his dealings with the Undertaker in his mind than what reality had been like.

"He'll want these later, I'm sure," the Undertaker said and set aside a vest and shirt to replace the ones that had been destroyed. "Don't look at me like that; it's not like these were some corpse's clothes. They're his. I wonder what's taking him so long…"

"I don't know," Sebastian replied. "Why do you have his clothes?"

The Undertaker laughed. "You pay so well," he commented. "Why do you think you're the only one who has to, though?"

Now that Sebastian thought about it, he had noticed a nice set of Shakespeare's works collecting dust on one of the shelves, and the sheets that he had laid Grell upon were a little too colorful for the Undertaker's tastes.

"It happens to every one of us eventually," the Undertaker said whimsically without any indication of what 'it' might be. And just in case Sebastian might have been interested in asking him to elaborate, he left then.

Waiting for the reaper to wake up gave Sebastian plenty of time to think, and he spent most of the time convincing himself that it was perfectly natural for Grell to take longer than the estimated amount of time to open his eyes. He knew it was all right, because he also knew what was going to happen once Grell woke up and learned what exactly Sebastian had done to ensure that he would be able to open his eyes, Sebastian knew that it would take nothing less than Spears' personal intervention to get rid of Grell again. If nothing else, the certainty of it all reassured him. That was why he felt the need to keep repeating his vision of the future to himself on loop.

When the silence had almost lulled Sebastian into sleep-heavy abstraction, Grell stirred.

Grell did not wake up demurely like some charmed princess out of a fairy tale, like Sebastian was half expecting him to. He grimaced and grasped the sheets underneath his hands tightly, and gave a startled cry as he realized that he was somewhere different from where he last remembered being. And that was before he saw that Sebastian was hovering over him.

Sleeping beauty, Grell was not. For one, fairy tale princesses did not toss sharp objects at their Prince Charmings upon awakening.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

It's somewhat discouraging to realize that your attempts to avoid discussing the elephant in the room are going to fail miserably in the next chapter, Sebastian, but luckily for you, there's an elephant in every room in the house and you only have to talk about the one in the parlour.

Please enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

~greyrondo

**Smoke and Crimson: Chapter Three**

Sebastian had taken up a somewhat emasculating stance of defenseless bewilderment against the window, deciding that it was marginally safer to his mortal form to break through glass than the lathe and plaster and lead paint humans still insisted on using to finish their walls.

Grell didn't say anything at all, just stood there half-naked with a glare that could turn someone to stone.

"These again?" Sebastian asked lightly as he yanked on the pair of shears, where they pinned the espresso curtains into the wall behind them. "What did you do this time?"

He noticed they were perfectly ordinary scissors at about the same time that he figured that maybe he should be more concerned for his well-being in this current situation than he previously thought.

The chainsaw barely missed him. "Nothing yet," Grell seethed.

Maybe God was bored. Maybe Sebastian had drifted off while watching over Grell, and the man upstairs had decided to have a little fun. That was it. This was a dream.

"You know, I've always thought you would look good with shorter hair," Sebastian said in an attempt to sound casual. Not that it worked. Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say.

Grell smiled.

"I have a confession, Sebby. I've been fantasizing about the day we would dance together again for years and years. I haven't been able to stop thinking about your broad shoulders, your seductive smile, your… my, I'm getting all bothered just saying it out loud like this! Take me now, Sebastian!"

Somehow, the way he said it seemed a little insincere. Sebastian ducked, and found himself in a corner, because corners are the best places to defend oneself from a madman wielding a chainsaw.

Sebastian flinched as the end of the chain guide sunk into the wall just an inch from his left ear. He didn't think he could fight his way out of this even if he wanted to. The last time, he had pulled what he would be the first to call a cheap trick.

And that was when Grell hadn't been taking him seriously, and didn't have that electric hatred sparking in his gold eyes.

Sebastian carefully reached to the side with his hand, carefully placing the tips of his fingers directly in the center of the chain guide so that the blades weren't a threat. He carefully, slowly ran his hand along the chain guide until it reached Grell's hand.

"As you wish," Sebastian told him. He had almost finished the phrase as he would have thirty years ago, addressed to a different person, but he caught himself in time. He was, after all, saying it for a different reason. And he certainly never would have kissed Ciel after saying it, either. Well, not like that, anyways.

"Aren't you going to thank me for rescuing you?" Sebastian asked.

"You call what you did to me being 'rescued'?!"

Sebastian paused in confusion before saying exactly the wrong thing. "Isn't it what you always wanted?" What more, he said it like a demon would, with a smirk on his face and a glitter in his red eyes that couldn't be blamed on the light.

It wasn't until after Grell flinched away, shaking with something that Sebastian didn't understand as his chainsaw disappeared into the air and he brought his hand up to his mouth, that Sebastian realized that Grell hadn't been turned around in his head at all when Sebastian had healed him. Grell had known exactly what was going on.

That changed things. "I saved your life," Sebastian quickly said in self-defense.

"Of course. That was the point, wasn't it?" Grell said then, shrinking backwards. "You even pulled one over the Undertaker. You already got what you wanted, why don't you just leave me alone—"

Sebastian stared at Grell with a blank expression. "I don't think I'm following you," he admitted. Then it occurred to him.

If Sebastian took a moment to look at the situation from the most convoluted point of view possible, then he understood what Grell was thinking. Barely. Meaning, if Sebastian's original intent was to rape Grell—instead of it being something that had happened as a sort of unplanned worst-case scenario course of action—then he could have planned Grell's assault with Lilith, and then shown up with the exact convenient timing that he did and 'save' Grell without any consequence, because Grim Reaper management would be grateful to Sebastian that they hadn't lost a reaper in the field.

What in hell.

"Grell," Sebastian said with as little enthusiasm as he could muster. "Sit down. I didn't—not that it's worth much, but I promise that I didn't mean you harm. Don't look at me like that."

That queasy mixture of fear and hate was the last thing Sebastian wanted to see on Grell's face, particularly when he couldn't think of a single—real—thing that he, as a demon, had done to the reaper to deserve such a look.

"No. Get out. Please—"

Grell's voice wavered before giving up completely, and he warily turned his back on Sebastian and then stared at the dark fireplace. He knelt down and reached out to the embers as if trying to capture some phantom warmth, and then it caught aflame with an impressive blaze.

There, in the narrow space between the bed and the nightstand, was a book. A small book, one that seemed more lost than anything else. Sebastian bent down and lifted it from the dust.

And he frowned. The cheaply printed book seemed to have been rescued out of the muck, and there was a suspicious stain on the back cover that looked quite like blood. He tried to reshelf it, but quickly noticed there was no obvious space where the skinny volume had been sitting. In any case, it would have stuck out terribly amongst the leather-bound volumes of Shakespeare.

So Sebastian turned away from the bookshelf, and considered the book. The title was in German: _Also Sprach Zarathustra_. And after reading the first few paragraphs, Sebastian wondered if this book hadn't accidentally wandered into Grell's collection after all; it certainly didn't seem the type of book that Grell would want to add to his others.

"Grell?" he called out, without taking his eyes away from the German type.

"What is it?" Grell demanded coldly as he stood up again. Sebastian merely lifted the book so that Grell could see the title.

"Oh, that," Grell said then. "It's not mine. I suppose it technically is—it belonged to a dead man. I didn't think anything of it when I saw the first copy lying next to a dead German soldier—on the battlefield, I mean—but then… I kept seeing it, and I…"

He shook his head. "The German reaper who collected the author's soul was there on the battlefield too. We talked for a little…and…" instead of continuing, he just bit his lower lip for a moment. "Not that you would be one to care about such human trivialities if they didn't fill your stomach," he said quickly.

As for an immediate response, Sebastian couldn't come up with one. He watched silently as Grell's long fingers flittered up to the nape of his neck, combing through the rough ends as if he still felt the phantom weight of his hair, with a stunned expression on his face.

"She did it because of you."

"Lilith was the one who cut your hair?"

"You think I would do this terrible of a job myself? Or give myself such an unfashionable cut? I'm insulted," Grell told him. "She called me 'your' reaper. What's she talking about?"

"I—" Sebastian began, and then shrugged and added, "I have no idea."

But then Grell sighed, and instead fumed quietly, "You left for thirty years without saying goodbye—not that I expected it. And when you do come back, the human you've contracted yourself to is Gavrilo Princip, the man who started the Great War!"

"Over a million British souls alone," Grell said, his voice subdued. "More than fifteen million in all. We think, anyways; paperwork still hasn't caught up yet. Can a demon like you even grasp the sense of such a number?"

Sebastian paused, and then shook his head.

"Of course you can't! Demons don't think about who has to clean up afterwards. I'm exhausted; if I were alive, I would be dead. I haven't slept in years and no, it's not because the thought of you keeps me up at night. I was just trying to do my job tonight, and Lilith herself assaults me, telling me that it's for someone who lost their husband-to-be in the war and wanted to go after the reaper who collected his soul. A soul that I sent to Heaven, might I add. Why should I be blamed—and attacked—for something that you did?"

The fact that Grell had said 'demon', instead of his name, stung.

"Will first sent me to Africa, disguised as a doctor's assistant for the British forces," Grell sent quietly. "Then it was trench warfare in Lorraine. And then Gravenstafel in April of 1915; I was there the day that chlorine gas was first used for warfare. And I… I was assigned to the Somme Offensive. So many British souls passed on in one day alone that we had to request help from the French and German reapers. Humans are…"

At that moment, Sebastian wanted to do two different things, and the weakened, fatigued look in Grell's eyes appealed to both of them. And while both of them involved reassuring the reaper, his odds of escaping unscathed were significantly higher with one method than the other.

If he wanted to be logical, then he wouldn't have bothered showing his face up here in the human world. And Grell would be…

Had Sebastian taken even one more night deliberating with himself, he would have been wasting his time. If he had taken one less night, then he could be having this same conversation, but with a significantly calmer tone.

Grell looked up at him, one hand still filtering through the ends of his shortened hair.

"So, do you want something? Need a reaper's assistance? Something I can do for you so that you can ignore me afterwards? You know that's my favorite," he said with a sly smirk. A sly, tired smirk that made Sebastian think of the shirt and vest that the reaper still had yet to put on, and their notable absence.

"Is it fun, hating me like this?" Sebastian asked calmly. He caught the glint of fireside light on Grell's glasses and on the sharp edges of his teeth as Grell's dangerous smile widened.

Sebastian knew that it would do him well to forget this entire endeavor and go look for a meal, perhaps one that didn't come with such a large price tag as the last one. For while it had a more robust taste than Ciel's, now that he thought about it, there had been something cheap to it, too.

But then again, he could just be evaluating his last meal with a more critical palate now that it had let to all of this. Had the taste been worth it? No. Ciel's soul had been allowed to marinate under his care, but he'd hardly had time to season Gavrilo's properly before it was time.

"Yes, there is a reason I'm here. But it would be improper to say."

"Is that so, Sebby? Is it that you've come here to pursue me? We were never meant to be. You're a demon, I'm a Grim Reaper. And especially after that night, I don't think my heart can withstand the hurricane of torment that the thought of reviving our love brings to me…"

The echo hadn't even left the room before Grell turned away from Sebastian.

"But you can't look at me after saying something like that to my face, either?" Sebastian demanded, and reached out for Grell's shoulder.

Grell whipped around the instant that Sebastian's glove touched his skin. "At least I'm rubbing off on you, darling Sebby. You're a far better actor than you used to be, although…"

"'Although' what, exactly?" Sebastian wanted to know, this time with a waiting smile.

"Although you seem to have lost your touch when it comes to charm. When did you become so awkward? You'll never win me over that way," Grell chuckled before his gaze jumped right back to the fireplace. Sebastian was right.

"You're insane, aren't you," Sebastian said to himself in a dazed awe. No, he corrected himself, not insane. Just as mercurial as a feline, and desperate to divert attention away from the subject at hand.

"That wasn't charming at a-ll…" Grell sung out over his shoulder.

That was when Sebastian had an idea that even he admitted was potentially a terrible one. But everything about Sebastian being here right now was a terrible idea, so he figured that there wasn't much worse for him to do.

It was too easy for Sebastian to clasp one arm low on Grell's hips, thin volume of battlefield-worn philosophy still in his hand, and another across his shoulders from behind.

"Quite honestly, there's something so very deliciously human," Sebastian murmured with a smile into Grell's ear, "about the despair underlying everything you say. If you had a mortal soul, I don't think I would be able to hold back. Even as it is, I…"

If he hadn't been specifically waiting for some sort of reaction, he might not have even noticed the barely audible whimper—it was more of a taut sigh, really—that made him retreat slightly.

It should have sunken in decades ago that he might have made a choice that he couldn't later correct, and Grell wasn't going to cave in to Sebastian's demonic charms any time soon. He would have to use a different method.

A method that meant that he really, truly wished to be here for the reasons that he suspected, and that he couldn't go back to Hell and pretend that his flirtation with Ciel and Gavrilo had meant anything more than a brief lapse in sanity.

"Would you allow me to start over?"

"What? No."

"Very well then," Sebastian said. "If I'm to blame for your current state of exhaustion, then it's only right that I be the one to look after you and help you recover. You're only wearing yourself out further; you should be in bed. Resting would be most helpful, but…"

Even years later, Sebastian would look back on that single instant and wonder just how Grell had managed to summon so much strength that Sebastian had wound up downstairs, dejected and sitting across a scrubbed table from the Undertaker, who had sighed and served him a cup of tea that had a strange aftertaste.

"Does this taste like bitter almonds to you?" Sebastian mused.

The Undertaker shrugged. "Maybe. Not on purpose. I'll have to find the name of the company I purchased it from; it would be good to have more for guests in the future."

Sebastian sighed. "Grell needs more time to recover from the injuries inflicted by Lilith, and agreed that it would be prudent for me to stay and assist with the recovery process. Anything you heard that might insinuate that I was kicked out and told never to come back, you are misinterpreting Grell's wishes."

"A reaper who's trying to fall off central management's map," the Undertaker said as he took Sebastian's empty teacup, "and a demon who would do anything to keep from going back to Hell…?"

"This is better than a class of medical students on their first trip to the morgue," he added with a raspy maniacal laugh.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

I just realized that the end of this chapter sounds kind of like it could be a really nice, lovely, fluffy ending to this fic.

Sorry, Sebastian. We're not having any of that.

Please enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

~greyrondo

**Smoke and Crimson: Chapter Four**

About thirty years ago, Sebastian did not sleep with a Grim Reaper. It had started off, oddly enough, with Ciel.

"Grell's not talking to you," Ciel smirked in the dim light of the sleeping quarters the occult sect had offered them for the night (Sebastian had asked why it was so quiet).

So of course, Sebastian felt obligated to go and reconcile the issue—whatever it was—with the Grim Reaper if he wanted to continue to rely on him throughout the investigation. But Grell had been so thoroughly useless in the past, Sebastian wondered if he was interrupting a blessing in disguise. Demons didn't receive very many blessings, disguised or otherwise, so he felt particularly bad about letting it go to waste.

He found Grell outside under a small floating mote of spell-cast light, where he sat against the side of a stone building making careful but, by the look on his face, somewhat less than interesting notations in a slim black book.

Sebastian braced himself in case Grell tackled him, but instead Grell just marked where he had left off and shut the book, setting it to the side where it conveniently vanished alongside with the spirit light— more reaper's magic at work.

"Something I can help you with?" he asked in the dark.

It sounded so ordinary that in the stunned silence that followed, Sebastian realized he had never had a real conversation with Grell alone before. He also took the time to figure out that if Grell was angry with him like Ciel said, then it might have had something to do with the fact that Sebastian had screwed a nun in the past two hours.

It turned out to be a fairly long silence.

"I didn't mean it," Sebastian said finally.

"Do you mean that?" Grell beamed.

"That's it? You're not upset?"

"What are we talking about?"

Sebastian cleared his throat. "I only did it to procure information. It didn't mean anything."

"Oh," Grell said, and wilted noticeably. "That's what we're talking about."

"What did you think I was talking about?" Sebastian wanted to know.

"Of course you meant it," Grell told him then. "The sentiment behind it, or the lack thereof. Whatever. Either way, you meant your loyalty to Ciel, and that was the only meaning going on there. You'd even sleep with me if Ciel wanted you to, wouldn't you. What if Ciel ordered you to enjoy it? Would you do your best?"

"Excuse me?!" Sebastian demanded.

Grell looked up at him over the top of his glasses, and smirked. "For someone who hates dogs, you must've made a pretty good study of them sometime or another—"

Sebastian lost control at that moment, although he would never admit to it. He dropped to the grass on top of Grell, and it wasn't until he already had his grip poised around Grell's throat did he remember that Grim Reapers didn't choke very permanently.

"Oh my, not even going to romance me first, Sebby? Did Ciel tell you to come out here and apologize to me? Was this the way he recommended?"

"It wasn't an order," Sebastian said. "I came out here because I wanted to—"

"—make your master happy," Grell interjected, and showed his teeth in a pleased smile. "He'd like it even more if you killed me. Even if you weren't successful, maybe you could go ahead and try, make a show of good faith. Maybe he'll lengthen your leash as a reward…hm?"

It was spite more than anything else that made Sebastian kiss him then. And because it was spite, and because it was difficult to maneuver a kiss while choking someone, it wasn't executed very well and Sebastian wound up with half a mouthful of pointed teeth instead of—well, he hadn't exactly planned on anything in the first place.

"Even by protesting, you're just defending the good name of your master," Grell told him as Sebastian drew back, but not far. "Especially with a kiss as devoid of passion as that one."

For some reason, that came off to Sebastian as a challenge, a challenge that he felt like answering. As he ran his thumb across Grell's lower lip, he asked, "What did you think we were talking about just now?"

"You're doing it again," Grell said and turned his head to the side, playfully escaping Sebastian's touch.

"What am I doing?"

"Using the fact that you're handsome to get what you want," Grell mused. "So I'll make a deal with you. I'll tell you what I thought we were talking about—but only if you back off."

And Sebastian was immediately impressed. For a Grim Reaper, Grell had a downright demonic skill with manipulation. At first, it seemed like it was a deal too good to be true: Sebastian would get what he wanted and he wouldn't even have to play along with what he assumed were Grell's fantasies anymore. But then he saw the level under that.

Why did he want to know so badly in the first place?

If he accepted the deal, then he would absolutely be telling Grell that he was in no way interested, and was in fact doing everything for Ciel. Since he wasn't quite sure if it was in fact Ciel's implied order that had made him seek out Grell in the first place, it wasn't a decision he wanted to make just yet.

Taking the context into account, what could Grell have possibly been mistaking the conversation for that was actually important?

Because for two seconds, Grell hadn't been acting, and he had been undeniably happy.

Sebastian drew back. He shouldn't have left Ciel alone for so long. He wasn't here to make some reaper's day. His contract was his most important responsibility right now and until it was fulfilled, nothing else could hold any priority. This whole matter screamed 'conflict of interests', and Sebastian wasn't having any of it.

He didn't even care about what Grell had been talking about anymore. Or at least he told himself that he didn't.

Sebastian had already stood up and begun to walk away when Grell said, "I thought you were apologizing. To me instead of at me, I mean."

"For what?" Sebastian asked as he paused.

"Well," Grell said then, "I thought you were going to tell me that you were only treating me like dirt this entire time because you were trying to placate your master, and you didn't really mean any of it. Aren't I kind?"

"Has anyone ever told you that you have a rather odd definition of 'kind'?" Sebastian said, looking out into the darkness. There were lights here and there throughout the complex, but otherwise it was a perfect night for stargazing. A human couple would have even found it romantic.

"It could have been something important. Something that you would have been forced to spend hours of your precious master's time pondering over. But instead, you get to walk away and you don't even have to deal with information that's worth half a moment of consideration? I'd call that rather generous of me…"

Sebastian sighed to himself. It was the closest he would let himself come to betraying how aggravated he was. Grell had saved the most painful sting until the end, and it hadn't even been on purpose. "Are you done?"

"Do you want me to be?"

"Yes," Sebastian said firmly. "I have more important matters to attend to than this conversation. In fact, it would be best if we never approached this topic again for the duration of my contract."

He didn't realize he'd been waiting for it until after it didn't happen. But there was a distinct sound of silence in the air that almost offensively took the place of a phantom "So after's fine?"

Clearly, desperate Grell had disappeared, probably soon to be replaced by angry Grell, or even bloodthirsty lunatic Grell. Good thing that Will had taken away the chainsaw.

Or maybe, as Sebastian turned around, quiet and heartbroken Grell. The Grell he had interrupted when he had first come out here, who had been steadily working and had asked him, "Something I can help you with?" in a pale, paralyzed voice that Sebastian had mistaken for normalcy. The Grell who was inexplicably in love with him and perfectly believed that Sebastian didn't even lust after him in return, and was hoping to be proven wrong.

Grell had returned to his work, spell-cast light drifting about like a will o' wisp, and Sebastian watched as Grell's gloved finger absentmindedly traced the line of his lower lip where Sebastian had touched him moments ago.

Sebastian didn't move for quite some time, and when he finally did, he ducked his head like he was embarrassed—which he was, except that embarrassment in demons was something a little less tangible than in humans—and finally went back to being a butler.

After that cup of tea with the Undertaker, Sebastian must have passed out for either a minute or an entire day, for when he opened his eyes, it was night again. There was a death shroud wrapped around his shoulders and the murmur of voices—Grell's and the Undertaker's—wrapped around his ears.

"So we're really keeping…him…"

"Sebastian was careful not to react, wasn't he? I'd go so far as to say that doesn't mean nothing."

Sebastian heard some disgruntled mumbling, and then Grell replied, "Don't call him that… 'Sebastian'. He's a demon, he has a demon name. One we should have used all along…whatever it may be. When he contracts himself to another human, he'll become someone else—whoever that human wants him to be, I imagine."

"Aren't you sulking?"

"This isn't worth it! He doesn't care about how I feel about this at all. I'd even go so far as to say that he's doing it deliberately. Just because he can, that sadistic bastard."

"You can't expect to get what you want without putting in some effort. You are sulking… and complaining… because of something that's ultimately for your own benefit."

More disgruntled mumbling. "I just don't want—not like this. I don't think I can do this."

Well then. If that was the sort of conversation that Grell was going to have about him, then it was obvious that Grell was well enough to be up and walking around, if maybe not scurrying about collecting souls just yet. Sebastian felt completely justified in letting the threads of exhaustion—exhaustion thanks to Grell, naturally—pull him back into slumber.

In the end, Sebastian just kept telling himself 'five more minutes' every time he was conscious enough to be able to string a thought together, and it worked as well as it did for anyone else. If Sebastian had to make a guess at the total amount of time he drifted between half-waking and slumber, he would estimate somewhere around a week.

So a week later, Grell laid sideways in the oversized chair across from the couch that Sebastian had commandeered. A weak slant of sunlight had paused over that chair, making Grell look not unlike a cat that had settled down for a nap. His legs were slung over one of the arms and the rest of him curled up against the back; he had removed his glasses and left them on the side table, next to the dusty lamp. And he wasn't breathing.

Demons don't panic very often. It happens maybe only once every few hundred years or so, sometimes on purpose just to remember what it feels like. But the fact that Grell's chest didn't rise and fall made Sebastian's eyes go wide as he leaned over and violently shook Grell's shoulders. He didn't understand how it could have happened. Grim Reapers didn't just die in their sleep like humans, did they?

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Grell demanded as he scrambled for his glasses.

"You weren't breathing!"

"Of course I wasn't," Grell said, irritated. "When have I ever breathed when I sleep?"

Sebastian thought back. "Well, when you say it like that—"

Grell set aside his glasses again, and then reached up and hugged Sebastian's waist. "I'll breathe if you want," he whispered suggestively, and kissed Sebastian on the cheek before holding him for a moment longer than Sebastian expected.

There was something strange about it, but then again, there was something strange about Grell falling asleep that close to Sebastian in the first place. Had Grell forgiven him? That was quick.

Then Sebastian settled on the edge of the chair, because he had never really seen Grell without his glasses. He took the frames from Grell's hand, unfolded them, and slipped them over Grell's nose and ears. After letting them rest there a moment, he briefly removed them before replacing them again.

"Are we… playing dress-up?" Grell asked. It might have been just Sebastian's imagination, but he thought there was a faint, faint hint of the Grell that he had first met in that voice. It most resembled the Grell who told Sebastian that he wanted to paint the demon's lips with his own blood, but that was an unimportant detail.

"Yes, actually," Sebastian told him. "I couldn't decide if I liked you better with them or without them. Is this your real hair color?" he asked as he brushed Grell's currently-brown hair out of his eyes. He realized he was paying far too much attention to the way that the light fractured in Grell's irises like lightning about the same time that Grell responded.

"Shouldn't you know?" Grell told him, which killed the moment.

"I was paying more attention to your survival than if the carpet matched the drapes, so no, I don't remember."

"Please don't ever say that in front of a human, I'm sure it would catch on," Grell chuckled, as if he had forgotten himself for a second. "And if you don't remember, I don't see any reason to tell you…"

"So you're telling me that it's the brown, and you're ashamed to admit it. Too boring?"

"I never said that!" Grell insisted and sat up a little. "You'll just have to find out on your own." He combed his hair through with his fingers, and in that instant it turned to scarlet.

"You know there's no appropriate way for me to do that."

"I know."

"By the way," Sebastian said, even though the topic he was about to bring up wasn't by any way already introduced into the conversation, "I want you to call me Sebastian. Or any variation you'd like of it."

Judging by the way Grell had opened his mouth to speak and then seemed to have forgotten how, Grell must have realized that Sebastian had overheard his conversation with the Undertaker. He said nothing. And if the way that the lightning in Grell's eyes stood still was any indication, there must have been more to that conversation than Sebastian had caught.

"I don't think I'd get used to it if I heard you call me anything else," Sebastian said. "Since you made such a lasting first impression."

Grell laughed. It sounded natural enough. Natural enough for Sebastian to justify to himself what he did next.

"This is ridiculous, finding you sleeping here when you have a perfectly acceptable room of your own," Sebastian decided as he slipped off the chair and gathered Grell into his arms like he would have with Ciel, except a very different sort of motivation instigated his care for Ciel, and Ciel had significantly shorter legs. There wasn't much of a change in the amount of fuss that each of them made, though.

"I was only down here too because you looked so lonely, resting there like that! I didn't mean right now; I'm all for being forward but this is downright unseemly, there is such a thing as romance, you know—"

About thirty years ago, Sebastian learned how to feel emotions instead of simply manipulate them, and oddly enough it had started with a meal.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

In this chapter, Sebastian learns that it's easier to control your appetite when you don't wait until you're starving, family is the perfect excuse to stop a conversation that's going south, and even the best of hiding places are useless unless the one doing the hiding understands how to hide properly. Please enjoy, and please tell me what you think!

~greyrondo

**Smoke and Crimson, Chapter Five**

It was late afternoon. The shadows of the sun sniping through the curtains had wandered astray since they had first stolen Sebastian's attention. Not that he was really concentrating on them; those shadows were simply the poor unfortunate things that happened to be easily visible from Grell's bed.

Grell was quiet and breathing, but he wasn't asleep. He was just very close.

"Do all Grim Reapers have a heartbeat as fast as yours?" Sebastian asked, somewhere between lazy and curious.

"Bad demon," Grell murmured drowsily as he opened his eyes. "I'm not answering that." He gave a disappointed sigh that seemed to be asking the bed sheets, 'what am I doing here?' and abruptly shifted out of Sebastian's arms so that he sat on the edge of the bed, perfectly positioned so that Sebastian couldn't see his face.

"Are all Grim Reapers this moody?"

"I'm not being moody. You're just being… I don't know," Grell said defensively, but if there was any strength behind it, Sebastian certainly didn't hear it.

"What am I doing?" Sebastian wanted to know, suddenly very interested. He sank further back into the pillows. When Grell simply shook his head, he added, "No, I want to know. Tell me."

Grell reached behind him without looking backwards, and found Sebastian's hand. He grasped it for a moment, and then flipped it so that the back of Sebastian's hand stared up at its owner, the pale and blank skin waiting for the time when it would next be marked.

That wasn't an answer. Not a definitive one, not the kind that Sebastian silently demanded. Especially since Sebastian had a wary suspicion that he knew what Grell meant by that little gesture, and it was something he didn't want to think much about at all.

Apparently, it was something that Grell didn't want to think much about, either.

Sebastian sunk further into the pillows as he wrapped one hand around the back of Grell's neck, the other braced against Grell's chest. Something about Grell's aggressive tendencies when it came to Sebastian had left the demon with the suspicion that it was just an act; Sebastian had been wrong.

"Careful," Sebastian murmured unconvincingly as Grell's teeth sliced into his lower lip. He nudged his tongue against the cut, searching for the blood, and then decided that since his tongue was already halfway there, he might as well let it wander.

The shock of Grell's gasp on his lips made Sebastian smile; he removed the hand that kept them apart and wrapped it around Grell's waist instead, cinching him tight. His kisses sunk deeper, blinding, and he didn't even realize what he was doing until he was immersed in the spices of fear, betrayal, and pain. A soul, seasoned to Sebastian's tastes.

The only thing that bothered Sebastian about the human soul—and there was nothing he could do about it—was that humans had life spans with definite beginning and end points. And even if a human somehow managed to drag along the degree of despair that Sebastian savored for a maximum human life span, the time for marinating was still significantly less than a century. And oftentimes, the flavor spoiled towards the end.

So if a human soul were to be trapped in eternal relative youth, repetitively ensnared by the raw edges of emotion that humans feel until extreme age perhaps dulls the pain, and then made to hover over deathbeds and battlefields, over murder and disease, then it would have two options as to how it would turn out. That soul could succumb to age's numbing gift and death could become as natural as breathing (or not breathing), or it could not.

Grell's soul, to put it simply, did not. Sebastian felt as embarrassed as a revered wine critic who had been told that the merlot he had once panned for its supposed crude taste, without it even touching his lips, was the same one that he now couldn't put down. And souls were something much subtler than any human food or drink, even wine.

While the mere taste of a soul didn't go into nearly as much detail as the cinematic record that reapers could access, there were very distinct impressions that left only a little to interpretation.

He could taste the sulk in Grell's eyes. It was a look responding to the memory of Sebastian standing by Ciel's side, and the realization that Ciel's face could be interchanged for any other human and the result would be the same. Grell did not want to share, did not want to leave Sebastian for a moment only to see him next with someone else that Sebastian would invariably prize more. And that, combined with the resolution that there was no way around that, barbed his soul like jealousy but with more pragmatic intent. A wall, with something precariously guarded behind it. Was it denial? Maybe. Maybe it was something different. Sebastian wanted to know.

What in hell did Sebastian think he was doing?

Sebastian and Grell stared into each other's eyes with parallel horror as Sebastian came to his senses. He was no longer embracing Grell; at some point in time he had shoved Grell backwards so that he was lying at the foot of the bed. Judging by the redness welling up in Grell's eyes, Sebastian had done so with enough force and bad luck to hurt him.

Sebastian moved perhaps half an inch, and Grell jolted backwards to get away from him. But he misjudged and went a little too far, and fell off the edge of the bed.

"Grell!" Sebastian called out, and looked over just in time to catch what appeared to be an expression of panic in Grell's eyes. "Are you—"

"Are you all right?" Grell wanted to know, his voice breathless. He was either dazed by his slight concussion or the aftereffects of almost losing his soul to Sebastian's appetite.

"Well…I think that out of the two of us, you're not the one who should be asking that question."

Grell looked away from him, and gathered himself together so that he was propped up on his elbows. After a long, long silence, he said with an almost businesslike tone, "You haven't even left this house for an entire week. And you wasted so much of your strength on me. You should go eat someone—something, I meant," Grell corrected himself far too suddenly.

"You're trying to get rid of me this quickly? Or do you plan on occasionally stealing my attention away from my contracted human soul like before?"

"I'm sorry," Grell told him with an audible, but failed, attempt at sincerity. "But really, talk about me being ridiculous? Look at you. So hungry that you'll even go for a Grim Reaper's soul—just go, I'd rather not collect your soul tonight."

"But you'd get to see that cinematic record you've always been wanting a peek at—"

"Not," Grell said roughly, "worth it. Sebby, if you don't go, I'm going to make you. I'll even go with you. It wouldn't be the worst thing I've done in the face of a reaper's supposed neutrality, and you know it…" he said with a coy smile.

While the thought of Grell attempting to force Sebastian to do anything was an entertaining one, he doubted it would actually result in something even vaguely resembling success.

"You would stand there and watch me swear my entire self, my time and devotion, mind and body, to a human being in exchange for his or her soul? Pardon me if I've misinterpreted your character, but I would like to think you personally, much less you as a Grim Reaper, would have a slight problem with at least one of those actions."

He gazed down at Grell, half-lying there on the floor. Grell glared back at him. "Sebby, do not make me conveniently lose a soul's papers. You wouldn't get to pick beforehand, so there's no telling what it would taste like."

Sebastian didn't want to press the matter further. He didn't need to. He already knew the answer. It just bothered him that not only was Grell surrendering; he was doing so with vigour.

"All right, fine. We're going; there's no need to resort to such measures. But still, are you sure you won't get in trouble?"

Grell's anger burned up in a flash, and he laughed. "Oh, I'm more than certain that I'll get in trouble. But really, who would I rather please, you or Will?"

Just the thought of Grell's boss made Sebastian shudder. That was the perfect picture of a Grim Reaper: emotionless, separated from humanity, painstakingly neutral not in detachment, but in equal distaste of both angels and demons. Even though Sebastian respected him and he had been incredibly useful from time to time and was even willing to put aside their differences—or rather, Will's own differences, since Sebastian didn't care either way—if it really mattered, Sebastian honestly doubted this would be one of those instances.

"Let's go," Grell prompted him.

"You're in a rush, aren't you?" Sebastian chuckled. "For someone who doesn't even have his coat on quite yet."

The spaces between the shadows on the street were brief. Even though they weren't going anywhere in particular (and if they were, Grell certainly wouldn't know where that would be) Sebastian found himself a few steps behind the Grim Reaper, who was moving incredibly quickly for a man in heels.

"I didn't properly apologize for before, did I?" Sebastian said, just loudly enough for Grell to hear. "I want you to know that I'm sorry. I didn't mean to attack you."

"Is that what we're talking about?" Grell said, and stopped in his tracks. He looked halfway back at Sebastian. "Or is there something else you're getting at? Is it just that I'm making you feel as if you should apologize, even if you've done nothing? If you're feeling inadequate about something, it shouldn't be about anything related to me. After all…"

" 'After all' what?" Sebastian asked. There was nobody in the street, and he slipped his arms around Grell's waist.

He felt the seized tension between Grell's shoulder blades dissipate, and then gave a soft sigh as Grell rocked back on his heels, leaning his back into Sebastian's chest. As he tilted his face up towards Sebastian, he smiled.

And he whispered, "You won't have to worry about me for much longer, isn't that right? I shouldn't want it any other way. I could never bear the thought of being a burden to you," and briefly caught Sebastian's lower lip in a near-kiss. "I would love to love you so much, Sebby. But I can't have you, and I don't want to love you if I can't have you. So I can't love you."

"When you say you can't love me—" Sebastian began.

Grell shook his head, and placed his hands over Sebastian's on his waist. "Hush, you'll break my heart if you keep that up," he said, but he smiled to himself. "So what is it that we're really talking about?"

"Why don't you tell me," Sebastian said, pulling himself away with what he convinced himself was distaste but stung infinitely more.

"Why did you come back? Why did you save me—"

"Why are you helping me?" Sebastian demanded in return.

"I'm just returning the favor," Grell said, his voice clipped. "So that you can begin your new contract without any outside ties. That's why you came back here, isn't it?"

"Grell, why would I come specifically to London just for a meal, when I have the entire world? Why would I keep this form—and this name? I came back here for something a little more important than that."

"I already know that, Sebastian," Grell said, his voice quite serious. "That's why I've kept you under my watch this entire week—is it time for our charade to end?"

"What are we talking about?" Sebastian asked, this time genuinely lost. But suddenly, there was no time for an answer. He did the only thing he could think of, which was, given the context, probably not the smartest: he shoved Grell into a recession in the wall.

"Stay quiet, and stay hidden," Sebastian hissed as he backed up against the wall, shielding Grell as best as he could.

"Sebby—"

"That does not count as 'quiet'," Sebastian warned him. Something had singed the night, and that something seemed to be his lovely aunt Lilith. "Stay here. Do not move unless you personally are in danger. I won't accept any lesser reason."

"Sebastian?"

At that, Sebastian dropped down and knelt in front of Grell, who was mostly hidden by the shadows. Sebastian kissed him. For a long time. When he finally broke away, he pressed his finger to Grell's lips, and then stood up and followed the burn.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

Hello, everyone! Thank you so much for reading and reviewing. You keep me inspired and on track, who knows where the narrative would go otherwise… not that it's not going in a strange direction already. In this chapter, Ciel's contract comes back to haunt Sebastian with some not-so-expected implications as to where Sebastian's loyalties could or should lie, even if he wants to keep the best of intentions in mind. Please enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

~greyrondo

**Smoke and Crimson, Chapter Six**

Everything would have been so much easier on Sebastian if Grell hadn't moved. He'd specifically ordered Grell not to move. He'd even accounted for the likelihood of Grell ignoring him, and gave Grell a possible scenario in which he could ignore Sebastian's explicit wishes without noticeably loosening Sebastian's grip on the situation.

If Grell hadn't moved, then Sebastian wouldn't have known why exactly Grell was so forgiving towards him. He wouldn't have known that the Undertaker was laughing at him, not just in his general direction, and he wouldn't have known about Lilith's plans.

Knowing about Lilith's plans was undeniably useful—such things were good to know, after all—but the fact that he didn't already know about them made Grell's forgiving nature and the Undertaker's laugh most unfortunate (and purposeless too, to boot).

And knowing didn't really make him feel any better, when it came down to it.

"Good evening, my dear aunt. The moon reflects off of your scales in an especially becoming manner tonight," Sebastian said as he took a seat in a parlor a block away from where he thought Grell was kneeling silently and safely at the time.

The parlor belonged to a human, but that was unimportant. What was important was that the parlor was dark and belligerently uninviting. "Would you like for me to start the fire for you?" Sebastian added, gesturing with an open hand to the dark fireplace.

"That's right, you would be rather good at that sort of thing," Lilith replied. "I suppose it couldn't hurt; no need to remember this parlor as a cold one. I'm moving tomorrow, alongside my contracted soul. She wishes to go to Germany; she's been researching the occult and it appears that there is a society of which she would like to make an acquaintance, and possibly from there form a working relationship as beneficial to her as our contract."

Sebastian was somewhat less than interested, even though he was interested in why his aunt thought that Sebastian would find such banal prattle interesting. He supposed that she would tell him on the sooner side of sooner or later.

A quick glance of Sebastian's at the fireplace set it alight, even though the ashes had been swept and there was no firewood in sight. He had little desire to do things properly for an audience like Lilith; she wasn't likely to appreciate the effort.

"As a young woman, she lost her fiancé. It wasn't until much later—or to be more exact, very recently—that she realized that she couldn't put the pieces together if she assumed everything to be… ordinary. And she couldn't have called at a better time. She's simply perfect, Azzy, you should see for yourself!"

'Azzy'. Was that necessary? No, it was not. "My name is Sebastian. For what purpose of yours is she perfect? Have you decided to follow my example and put more thought into what you devour?"

"If that were the case, my dear nephew, then I could fulfill her wish by calling her down right now. The demon who was responsible for her fiancé's disappearance, after all, is you."

"You should see how she's grown," Lilith commented softly. "Sweet little Elizabeth."

To that, Sebastian didn't have anything he immediately wanted to say. He simply crossed one leg over another, and leaned back a little in the upholstered mauve chair. It did seem to be a subdued, aged version of Elizabeth's tastes, now that it was obvious that it belonged to her.

"I could, of course, not tell her. That way, you could come to Germany with us."

"Why do you want to go to Germany?" Sebastian wanted to know.

"An experiment," Lilith answered. "How does the death of God sound to you? It's a little inaccurate, but it does roll off the tongue quite nicely."

Frankly, it sounded like business as usual as far as his aunt's typical hobbies went. The only difference this time around was that Lilith was making a greater effort to include him than usual. That bothered him.

"I found the reaper that you'd left on the verge of death," Sebastian said conversationally. "That's what I came here to discuss. Though, honestly, there's not much to be said."

Lilith chuckled. "If by 'found', you mean 'had your way with', then there's plenty to talk about. I'm so pleased that my darling little nephew has found himself a handsome gentleman friend. Oh, but that's right, I'm a demon, aren't I? And so is my darling little nephew. That means he has more important things to be doing with his time than a Grim Reaper."

"Especially a Grim Reaper I disapprove of so wholeheartedly," Lilith sighed. "Why do you do these things to me, dear? I worry over you so much. Sometimes I feel like you don't even consider your poor old auntie at all…"

Sebastian frowned. "What has one local Grim Reaper done to merit your disapproval?"

"He's taking on more than he can handle, both he and his boss," Lilith smirked. "I'd call it a more active role in the war between Heaven and Hell. They know I'm scheming something, but they doesn't know what it is."

"Except that we do, and you can expect for a flock of archangels to know that same information very soon."

If Sebastian had to pick the one voice he would have wanted to hear the least at that moment in time, it would have been Grell's.

"You probably already know this, but angels can break demonic contracts if it's an emergency. This will most likely meet Heaven's qualifications for such an intervention, so… oh, and don't even think about darting upstairs and stealing Elizabeth's soul away now, she's being watched by an old friend of a friend of hers from her childhood, someone she knows as the 'Undertaker' and I know as a coworker."

Not too long ago, Lilith had almost killed Grell just for the fun of it. Now, she was going to get another opportunity. Judging from Lilith's offhanded comment earlier, Sebastian decided that if he really wanted to, he could place all of the blame for the current situation on Will. So where was he?

Will wouldn't be here. He would be sitting in his office or wherever it was that Grim Reaper managers shuffled their paperwork, waiting for someone to tell him that if he didn't intervene, then he would have one less name to fill in for the graveyard shift on Tuesday.

With that thought, Sebastian delicately stood up, and straightened his black suit jacket. "Grell, was this what you were talking about?"

"Yes, my dearest Sebby."

Sebastian did not find the way that Grell said that attractive at all, but he was willing to take account for the circumstances. He wanted to end the circumstances even more. "Lilith," he said, "you should leave now."

In an hour from this point, he would reminisce and realize how ambiguous his actions looked to the two parties he was trying to keep apart. To Lilith, of course, it looked just like he was trying to protect Grell. But from Grell's standpoint, it looked like Sebastian had slightly different priorities.

It didn't help that Lilith ascended from her armchair and politely embraced Sebastian before kissing him on both cheeks, before saying warmly, "Then I'll leave this to you," before disappearing. But Sebastian hadn't put the pieces together just yet, which was understandable. He had been a little occupied waiting for Lilith to strike.

"You're unharmed?" Sebastian wanted to know as he took Grell aside and gently gripped his shoulders.

It took Grell a few seconds before he responded. He lightly shook his head, his shellshocked gaze still trained on the space behind Sebastian.

The demon sighed with relief. Ordinarily, Sebastian wouldn't have immediately felt this touchy-feely, but these weren't ordinary circumstances. He tucked a few loose strands of scarlet hair back, and brushed his lips against Grell's. "You're such an idiot," Sebastian murmured. "You could have died. Were you even listening to me earlier?"

"What do you think you're doing to one of my reapers, demon?"

Sebastian jerked back at that voice that sounded like the keys of a typewriter. It was Will.

Before Sebastian had time to come up with some sort of reply, Grell took a shaky step backwards. He bit his lower lip, and then in a heartbeat he recovered. As he dragged the back of his glove against his lips in something that smacked of contempt, his look of pale shock caught fire.

"I am an actress, aren't I?" he smirked at Sebastian.

And Sebastian didn't know what to do. "Well, you've caught me unawares. If I had known the curtain would be falling tonight, I would have brought you roses. I'd say this was your best performance."

Grell beamed. "Really? You know how much I value your opinion; your approval is worth more to me than the most glowing critical reviews."

"I apologize for the deception, demon," Will said. "I usually make a genuine attempt to keep my standards above yours, but it was an emergency. You understand. We suspected that you were directly involved with Lilith's plot, but now we only have circumstantial evidence. Given that you're a demon, that doesn't do much for you, but it does change the writing in your file. Mr. Sutcliffe," he added, his voice clipped, "I expect your report on my desk in two hours. I suggest you start now if you want your request to be fulfilled in a timely manner."

"Well, that was rather fun, wasn't it?" Grell said. But it was directed at Sebastian, not Will.

"You—" Sebastian seethed, a curse on his tongue. But then he realized that curse would have only been directed at himself. He'd been a little too human, for a little too long; he'd seen what he wanted and nothing else.

"Don't look at me like that, Sebby," Grell sighed derisively. "I just knew it wouldn't last. And that—can you blame me for being hurt? For even becoming the teeniest bit upset? And… for not feeling bad for deceiving you? After all, I decided that if you went along with it, you would be doing the exact same thing. And you did go along with it. I'm so glad I could provide an entertaining diversion for you… for a little while, at least."

"No," Sebastian protested. "I—"

"The problem, Sebby," Grell interrupted him with a zig-zag smirk, "with any attempt of yours to defend yourself is that I have no idea if you're lying or not."

Now that was a complete lie. Not the possibility—would they even be standing there at that moment if Sebastian weren't a demon? But Sebastian knew perfectly well that there was a way to prove to Grell that Sebastian was telling the truth.

"If certainty's what you're after, why don't you kill me?" Sebastian suggested.

In that smudge of silence in the night, the way the moonlight reflected off Grell's glasses changed. The jagged line that Grell's teeth drew in the darkness faded.

"Not all the way," Sebastian added, "Just enough—to see for yourself."

"I—" Grell stammered. "I could never hurt you—"

"Somehow, I don't think I'm the one you're afraid to hurt," Sebastian said quietly and reached out to the Grim Reaper. "Or rather, I'm not the only one. I'm willing to be hurt, but you aren't?"

"How dare you even say such a thing," Grell seethed, and smacked Sebastian's hand aside. "It's nice and all, isn't it, to be so sure of yourself that you genuinely believe that you'd never have to actually experience the pain you're suggesting you're prepared for? If you really did come back to London with me in mind, like you suggest, I bet there was never a single instant in which you thought it might work out different from exactly how you wanted it."

"That's not true."

At that point, Will cleared his throat. "Grell. We're leaving."

Grell stared at him in grudging disbelief, and after a short sigh, said to Sebastian, "For the record, despite Will's management blather, we have no reason to believe that you're involved. Far as we can tell, you're innocent."

"That's good to know. Of course, I could have told you that myself, considering that I was not only innocent, but wholly oblivious."

"That would be good to know," Grell agreed softly. "I'm…getting transferred. To America. That was the deal. I play along with you and investigate your involvement, I....well, there's nothing more to be said, is there? Except for goodbye, that is."

Grell could have left just then. Judging by Will's glare, it would have been better for him. But he didn't, not immediately. He took off his glasses, polished them with a crumpled white square of cloth, and didn't even put them back on until after he had turned away.

"Mr. Grell Sutcliffe," Sebastian called out. "Wait. Just a moment. You really still love me, don't you." It wasn't a question. Sebastian couldn't have been bothered with a response, he just wanted an affirmation.

He might as well have been asking the shadow of a street lamp where the sun had gone, for all the answers he was going to get out of the empty doorway.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

Sometimes even demons need a pat on the back and some encouragement. Thankfully, Sebastian gets both just before he sets off on a journey that would take much longer for him if he were human (but it won't, which is nice). Please enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

~greyrondo

**Smoke and Crimson, Chapter Seven**

It wasn't that Sebastian didn't understand; he understood perfectly. After all, Grell had done a phenomenal job leaving essentially nothing to question. He'd been kind in that sense, in that perverse sense of compassion of his: compassion that was afraid of being found out, or compassion that didn't want to be seen as kind for fear of being reciprocated. The compassion, the kindness, the favor that in so few words, said to its receiver: 'thank you, let me pay what I owe you; now get out of my life.'

A little put off by the entire affair, Elizabeth had gone outside for a smoke in that glamourous sort of way. Sebastian figured that he had missed out on some sort of human trend, and he imagined that if Grell were here, he would be more than happy to explain. Meanwhile, Grell wasn't, and the Undertaker asked if he could offer his services.

"What?" Sebastian asked incredulously.

"I'm not half bad at analyzing a corpse and figuring out how it died. The look on your face tells me that you need a little assistance."

While Sebastian preferred not to think of his prematurely assumed relationship as a dead body, it did share some qualities in common with the Undertaker's favorite subject. It didn't have much of a pulse at the moment, and it looked rather lonely just lying there for everyone to see. Besides, there were a few loose ends that Sebastian had previously ignored, and he suspected the Undertaker could them tie together. So Sebastian could know more, and feel even worse. He was looking forward to it already.

"The body in question suffered its most notable wounds during the war, of that much I'm sure. Based on conjecture, however, I'm guessing it was never really in that good health to begin with, considering the debilitating effects of outside influences both in and beyond its control. There were obvious attempts to treat the wounds and improve overall health, but those attempts failed, and the results are as you see them before you now."

That left far too much to interpretation.

"So correct me if and when I make a wrong assumption," Sebastian said. "After the Great War, Mr. Sutcliffe didn't recover."

The Undertaker laughed encouragingly, if such a thing could be done.

"And I certainly didn't help," Sebastian added softly.

The Undertaker cleared his throat. "Omission is the same as making a wrong assumption. Don't give yourself all of the credit."

Sebastian frowned. "Who or what else?"

"Mr. Sutcliffe, as you prefer to call him now that you're all sore, showed up on my doorstep one delightfully depressing evening, begging me to let him stay for the night after he finished work. He really did try not to be a burden," the Undertaker laughed, "but in the end, I could tell that the less time he spent near Will, the less insane he would be. So I let him take the upstairs room. Why he ever expected Will to understand about his reaction to the human's slaughter, I'll never know."

The conversation that Sebastian had heard between Grell and the Undertaker made much more sense now. He knew he hadn't done anything directly to be called specifically a sadistic bastard.

If Sebastian had learned anything, it was that Grell kept proving that he was smarter than Sebastian assumed. Demons weren't bound to any particular place; it would have done Grell no good to move just to get away from Sebastian.

Grell had made the deal to put on his mask and investigate Sebastian's involvement with Lilith's schemes to get away from his boss, not Sebastian. And in the end, he had been acting to throw off Will, and that's why he had gone ahead and let it slip that he was being transferred to the States.

Of course, there was also the solid argument that if Grell hated Will that much, he wouldn't have cared about letting Will see how much he wanted to be with Sebastian, since that had never stopped him before. But that argument notably detracted from Sebastian's suddenly relieved mood.

"Sebastian Michaelis," the thin older woman with smokey eyes said as she came into the room. "You don't look a day older than when I last saw you. Would you be a Grim Reaper too, then?

"No. Let me tell you why you're here," Sebastian said reluctantly, and took a moment to rub his eyes and massage his temples. This was the last thing he wanted to be doing right now, explaining to a more than middle-aged Elizabeth Middleford (she had never married, and had even run away from her mother the day after getting engaged and used a different name until a few months ago) something that had indirectly happened to her when she was thirteen.

The Undertaker had already filled in the general picture: that he was actually a Grim Reaper, that the man Elizabeth had put in a very nice white dress as a child was also a Grim Reaper, and that Ciel hadn't wandered back to the Phantomhive mansion's charred ruins on his own steam. In other words, all of the context that Sebastian had wanted to explain to paint a picture of his own decency before telling her the one thing she wanted to hear the least.

There were still the remains of holy light surrounding her from when an angel had broken the contract. Elizabeth was now nursing a spot on the back of her left shoulder, but otherwise she didn't seem too bothered. If anything, Sebastian was bothered; why was she even there at that moment?

Forming a contract with a demon was a surefire path to Hell for a human soul. Maybe the angel had been particularly forgiving and had decided to let Elizabeth live the rest of her life in the mortal world. Perhaps she would even be re-evaluated. Well, that was nice.

Judging by the look on Elizabeth's face, she'd had a few too many decades of nonsense.

"Or rather, why don't I just get to the point?" Sebastian decided. "My aunt Lilith—yes, my aunt, making me a demon—knew the answer to your question before she even formed a contract with you. You were much more useful to her than she was to you; your curiosity would have brought her to where she needed to be. She has far too many ulterior motives for me to go into at the moment. As long as you never directly asked, she would have been able to lie to you with her silence. Let me be clear: I formed a contract with your fiancé and when the terms of the contract were fulfilled, I devoured his soul. No, I don't feel bad about it."

But Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "Of course not; he had a few more years on this Earth because of you, and I had a few more years with him. If he was at the point that he needed your help, I doubt he would have found himself in Heaven anyways. I didn't want to find the demon who had taken Ciel's soul so I could complain, what would be the point of that? I wanted to thank you. And I'm especially glad that you're the one to which I owe those thanks. So thank you…"

He almost gave her his real name at that moment. The reason he had held onto 'Sebastian' for so long was gone. But she didn't want to thank that other name, because that name wouldn't have bothered making Ciel's last few years enjoyable. That name wouldn't have wasted his breath even discouraging Grell's advances. "Sebastian is just fine," he told her. "And I don't think that I should be receiving your gratitude, but I'm happy to accept it all the same."

"Are you the only one that's left, then?" she asked, turning to the Undertaker.

"I'm afraid so," the Undertaker sighed. "I don't think Sebastian will be staying for much longer, and Mr. Spears is already long gone."

"That stern fellow? He was rather odd. Not that you aren't," Elizabeth added with a smile. "Are you really going to be leaving soon, Sebastian? What exactly for?"

He hadn't even thought about it until just then, but after the suggestion was made, he didn't see any other alternative.

"For the new world, as it was once called," Sebastian replied.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

This chapter is a little longer than usual. Sebastian gets advice from a very unexpected source (his supper), learns how politics can apply to his personal life, and makes friends with someone who isn't very useful, but a good person to know all the same. Please enjoy, and please tell me what you think!

~greyrondo

**Smoke and Crimson, Chapter Eight**

The Great Depression was shaping up to be just as depressing as it claimed. Sebastian hadn't eaten this well in decades; but he felt guilty about giving his meals less than his all. He simply couldn't concentrate.

"You're rather contemplative for a demon, aren't you?"

Sebastian turned away from the window, which looked out onto the decidedly optimistic horizon of Washington, D.C. He chuckled. "Not all of us are actively dedicated to the corruption of humanity as a whole. Some of us would rather lead honest lives."

"You mean that _you_ would rather lead an honest life. If I didn't know better, I would say that the goal towards you're striving is closer to humanity's salvation."

Sebastian was standing; his master was sitting. It was something that his master made sure never to admit to or even suggest in public, the paralysis from the waist down.

"If it is your wish, then it is my duty. My personal interests, though, do lie somewhat along the lines of preventing any unnecessary suffering. It makes the job of other agents of the preternatural world less of a burden, and I do think that there's something to be said for being a considerate member of my community. By the way, the beginnings of your 'New Deal' should have no problem proceeding through Congress."

"How—"

"If I couldn't even accomplish such a small thing, then I shouldn't be able to proudly call myself your servant, Franklin Delano Roosevelt."

He watched as the tension racking the President of the United States of America visibly ebbed away. "Well, that's a relief, to say the least. Our agreement notwithstanding, is there something that can be done for you?"

America, as a whole, was rather large. Sebastian had assumed that Grell had meant the United States, but upon closer analysis, Grell's actual word choice had been quite vague. Two continents and a horde of islands vague, to be exact. So Sebastian had started with the areas under British colonial control, wondering if Grell had been transferred to one of those, and moved from there. He'd even gently pulled the occasional local Grim Reaper aside and asked if he or she had seen a British reaper about, preferably an insane one. Not once did he get the answer he was looking for.

"I'm afraid not," Sebastian mused. He hadn't blindly formed a contract with a politician; he knew it would be an easy way to keep his eye on events in the human world and he was hoping that Grell would do something somewhere in this half of the globe that would be obvious, like a repeat of that one Jack the Ripper incident. So far, no luck. Apparently Sebastian, for what little time he had spent with Grell, had a dampening effect on Grell's lunacy.

"Penny for your thoughts, then?"

"Is Eleanor doing well?" Sebastian asked. The marriage had been effectively destroyed years before Sebastian had become acquainted with the American politician—Franklin hadn't yet been President when the contract was formed—and Eleanor currently lived in a separate residence; while they were an effective pair in the political sphere, to say there was any intimacy in their marriage would be a hopeful wish and nothing more.

It had been because of an affair, because the President had made a promise—the promise of marriage—and the choice to prize one soul above all others, and had broken it. Sebastian didn't know the details of the marriage prior to its current state, and didn't think it appropriate to inquire.

"Is that meant to be a remark on your thoughts, or a distraction from them?" the President laughed musingly. "You forget I'm a politician; I know when someone's dodging the subject, even if he is a demon."

"A remark on my own thoughts, then," Sebastian answered.

"Is that so," the President murmured. "I'd like to make an inquiry about your kind, if I may. Do demons love?"

"In general?" Sebastian clarified. "Not really. The potential to do so is certainly there, but I've never known a demon to really and truly make any use of such an instinct for personal purposes."

"It seems I've asked the wrong question," the President said agreeably. While Ciel, with his child's mind, had been frequently angered by Sebastian's tendency to omit the truth whenever it wasn't explicitly asked for, Franklin found it amusing, almost like a game. "Do you, a demon, love?"

"In general," Sebastian answered, "no."

"But specifically—"

"Specifically," Sebastian paused as he replied, "you are the one who holds contract with me and, therefore, you are the one to which I devote the highest attention and regard. It is in no way your definition of love, nor my definition of love, but it is loyalty and devotion to such a degree that to pursue something even akin to love would be to cheat you of your half of our bargain. That being said," he added with a smile, "I've fallen quite hard for Death. You see, Death as I know it is quite stunning. Overwhelming at times, but…"

Despite himself, Sebastian sighed. "When you've lived for as long as I have, there's something to be said for a being with such an overwhelming presence."

"What is death like?"

"I'm afraid I can't give you the answer you're looking for," Sebastian said to him. "The Death I know is not the death you will know. After all, for all points and purposes, I am your death."

"It seems we're having two different conversations at the same time," the President commented agreeably. "Curiosity—and, I admit, fear of where my conversation might lead— wants me to follow yours instead of mine. Is Death a perfect being? An angel, or a demon?"

Sebastian laughed. "Death is hardly a perfect being, and closer to a human than an angel or a demon. And I don't believe that our conversations are so mutually exclusive that one must be stopped for the other to continue."

"Well in that case, how isn't Death perfect? Isn't death supposed to be neutral?"

Even before he had arrived in America, it seemed that the nation refused to be involved with any other nation's going-ons. Which was wise of the humans, Sebastian noted, if not very smart. Maybe that was why Grell wanted to come here—he wouldn't have to clean up after another war.

"Neutrality is far from perfection," Sebastian said. "And Death is nowhere near neutral, in some aspects. But even if Death were, somehow, both neutral and perfect, then where is the allure?"

The President chuckled. "A demon would find death alluring… except for your own, of course."

"I would like very much to make Death my own."

"As would most of humanity, given half the chance."

"You've no idea how much of a slave to humanity Death already is, and has been, since the first instance of passing on."

"So Death… doesn't relish war?"

No leader worth his subjects' adoration would want to send his people to war and into death's arms. There were plenty who did so and achieved the adoration of their subjects, but it was all delusion, a veil that would only be lifted to be placed over the face of a corpse.

"That would have to depend on Death," Sebastian mused. "I knew Death, initially, as one who would have cared little for casualties, and then I later ran into Death again, after the Great War, and Death had changed its point of view. Just as humans mature, so does the nature of death. And the methods of inflicting it," Sebastian added.

Things were not quiet. There was a time when humans could afford to turn their backs on their long-distance brethren, but that time was past. Everything was now connected, just as Sebastian could not ignore the actions of his family.

"So if I may ask a question again, in a new light," the President said, "what is Death like?"

Sebastian closed his eyes, wishing for a moment of inspiration to seize him so that he could best convey as much of Grell as would be fitting of the current conversation, and as little of his curious insanity, as possible.

If Grell wanted to be found, he would have made Sebastian go through some effort, but in the end it would have been far too easy. It had been years; Grell wasn't that patient of a man. The only answer that made sense was that Grell wasn't here.

Why would Grell tell Sebastian the wrong place? Had he been trying to get rid of the demon? That was childish. And hardly fair. Something about the search, though, must have appealed to Sebastian or he would have grown tired of it. It gave him something to do, a grander goal in his life other than satiety.

But then a possibility occurred to Sebastian, one he should have thought of years ago.

Grell hadn't told Sebastian to go to America to find him; he had told him to go to America so that, since he was innocent, he couldn't be physically present in Europe to get ensnared in his kin's plotting. And with the United States of America's post-war isolationist stance, it would be practically impossible for Sebastian to become involved from abroad.

No.

That wasn't what was happening at all. Was this what Grell had felt after Sebastian had rejected him that night? The tumbling and runaway need to take every little meaningless gesture or action and twist it around into proof that maybe he was still important?

Sebastian didn't like being so thoroughly refused. It hurt him and it was, whether he wanted to admit it or not, a serious blow to his pride. Human lore of demons had painted him as a quite attractive gentleman in every sense of the word, even in his true form, for centuries; if any demon were to be desired, it should be him. He liked to think that he was a step above his brethren, that he was the most capable of ensnaring whoever he pleased for as long as he pleased. He wasn't Lilith's nephew for nothing, after all.

And since it was his first attempt to reach out and become something more than just the stereotypical manipulative demon, it didn't bode well that it had been a failure. Confidence was an attractive quality no matter where you spent your free time in the afterlife, and he didn't think he could count on that quality anymore.

He was supposed to be answering a question, wasn't he?

"He—" Sebastian began. "I mean, Death… I don't know quite what I mean. I apologize for being unable to provide you with an adequate answer."

"That's perfectly all right. Your hesitation was enough of an answer. May I impose on your confidence? I have something I'd like to ask of you. It's a serious request. Is it possible to defer a contract?"

"To defer…? What sort of request would you have me fulfill that would make you ask about such a thing?"

The President sighed. "In January of this year, Germany appointed a new Chancellor, one that made promises that cannot be kept without disturbing the current global state of relative peace. Chaos, under any circumstances, would threaten my country. I can't imagine what it would do for the rest of the world. Taking that into account, I do not believe you can even hope for a successful intervention with your loyalties bound to me. I'm a politician, I know how you demons have to work," he added with a sideways smile.

"If you choose to defer the contract, you understand that I have no obligation to even consider your request," Sebastian said to him.

"No. But from what I can tell, there's something that you want to do for someone else, for reasons that have nothing to do with obligations. You just didn't know that this was an option."

Sebastian sighed. He didn't know if he wanted to do anything anymore. Things that were dead should be left dead, even though he felt sure that the Undertaker might not necessarily agree that anything dead should be 'left' to do anything on its own.

"You wouldn't last a day in human politics, you know that?" the President laughed. "You can't always do the popular thing, or wait until you know one hundred percent that what you want to do, you'll receive thanks for. I know that when my New Deal starts to affect the American people, it's going to make someone, somewhere, very unhappy. They'd rather spit on me than shake my hand. They won't see that it will benefit their lives, but I will. So I want it to go through anyways."

The entire situation was absurd. But so was Sebastian's reason for being here in the first place.

"This is all very unbecoming of a demon," Sebastian chuckled as he extended his hand. The President grasped it, and after a firm handshake, the seal on the back of Sebastian's hand faded. "Under no contractual obligation, it brings me great pride to be in your service. I'll drop by after the successful completion of my task, and we'll talk again. Or perhaps it might just be a social call."

"And when you see him," the President said casually, "give Death my regards, and ask him to please look upon me favorably when the time comes."

That made Sebastian laugh. "I'll ask him to put in a good word for you. That, of course, depends on you. If it ever does come to war, then I trust you'll make the right decision. If I can't allow myself to turn my back on how I affect others, then…"

He knew he didn't have to finish that sentence.

Sebastian thought he would drop by London just for old times' sake, even though he knew that Grell wouldn't be there: after all, that would be too easy, and why would matters suddenly get easier for Sebastian? At least the actual travel across the Atlantic was something mildly effortless.

Besides, he had his priorities amiss. He should do something that would win over Grell first and then 'accidentally' run into him—a nice reversal of the Great War incident that had gotten Sebastian into such hot water with the Grim Reaper in the first place—rather than the other way around. But really, what was stopping him from passing by the morbid business of one undertaker in specific and dropping in for a social call, one that involved inquiring after a mutual friend?

Maybe that was an optimistic term for their relationship right now. In any case, he wouldn't know what to call it if he didn't have any current information, so it was just as well that he did this first before he really got started. Peace of mind would help him focus, and he needed focus if he wanted to directly involve himself in human affairs to such an extreme degree.

If this all sounded so logical, then why was he still sitting gloomily on the far extreme right end of a bench just outside Hyde Park? And why was a sandy-haired young man in a dark suit and glasses giving him a strange look from across the street?

Sebastian sighed wearily to himself and straightened his back as said suspicious young man crossed the street. But this young man didn't do it directly. He'd gone over to the corner and crossed properly, and then made sure not to make any eye contact with Sebastian as he walked past on the sidewalk, though his gaze was more or less focused in Sebastian's general direction.

This was getting rather tiresome. "Something I can help you with?" Sebastian called over to him. He wanted to know if this young man would continue his ruse and pretend that it was all a misunderstanding, or give it up and get on with whatever business he intended.

At least the man was honest; he doubled back and laughed in an easygoing manner as he took a seat on the other side of the bench. "Well, this isn't half embarrassing," he admitted. "First, let me introduce myself. My name is Ronald Knox, although I really just go by 'Ron', and I think you might be acquainted with a superior of mine in the office from a few years ago? Providing that you are who I think you are, anyways. We've never met," Ron clarified. "I'm sorry, I must sound like a rambling fool."

Sebastian frowned. "I'm sorry, where did you say that you worked?"

"I'm an accountant."

And then Sebastian sighed. "I don't know any accountants." To himself, he added silently that if this Mr. Ronald Knox wanted to trade his soul to find his old superior, then he would be willing to negotiate. Then he realized that he hadn't introduced himself, probably because he didn't know how to best go about doing so. "I'm sorry, I've been in Washington, D.C. until very recently. My name is Sebastian Michaelis."

"I knew it!" Ron exclaimed. "It is you—I'm sorry for staring at you earlier, but like I said, we've never met, so I had to go off my superior's description of you. He talked about you a fair amount," Ron said, and then quickly added, "Of course, only in the most flattering way. Which actually made it difficult to tell what was accurate and what was exaggeration… but no matter! Thank goodness."

There was something very suspiciously familiar about the way that Ron described his superior, and if Sebastian's suspicions were correct, then Ron most certainly was not an accountant except in an awkwardly humorous sort of way.

"Ah, what exactly did you say your superior's name was?" Sebastian wanted to know.

"I'm sorry, I should have said that from the start!" Ron said. Sebastian wordlessly agreed. "His name's Grell Sutcliffe, and I was wondering if you knew whatever had happened to him. One day he was in the office, next his things were gone and no one seemed to say anything about it. This whole conversation on my part is very spur-of-the-moment, if you can't tell."

That was disappointing. Apparently this random Grim Reaper had walked up to Sebastian wanting to know the exact same thing that Sebastian had specifically dropped by London to find out. Sebastian extended his hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Knox. I mean Ron," Sebastian said.

"Same here," Ron replied and shook Sebastian's hand. "You're a demon, aren't you?"

"And you're an accountant, aren't you," Sebastian responded with a smirk.

"A little joke of mine," Ron told him. "We aren't really encouraged to have a sense of humor. I shouldn't be talking to you either," he added. "And maybe not about Mr. Sutcliffe, now that I think about. Huh," Ron said with a shrug, but he looked distinctly more wary than he had when he sat down.

"Anyways," he said as he stood up. "This conversation never happened, but if you ever need a favor from a Grim Reaper, have a word with me. I don't know what you were to Mr. Sutcliffe, but he helped me out a few times with—with some internal business. I'm talking too much, aren't I? It was good to finally meet you, Mr. Michaelis."

"Wait a moment," Sebastian said, and he admitted something to this comparative stranger that he'd been so adamant about denying just before Ron had sat down. "I'm looking for him, actually. That's why I was in the United States until about forty minutes ago. He told me that he was going to be transferred, but I don't know if that was the truth or not. That being said, if you can recall anything at all, about something he might have said, even an offhanded remark…"

Ron stood there for a moment, and then shook his head. "Nothing comes to mind. He didn't even come into the office full-time the last few years that he was around. Maybe that's why nobody said anything when he finally disappeared. I suppose it was just that nobody noticed."

That's right, the Undertaker had said that Grell had lived with him for some time. But not being noticed and Grell Sutcliffe were two entirely irreconcilable concepts. "Thank you anyways," Sebastian said.

"No, thank you," Ron protested. "If you do find him—well, never mind. My offer still stands. Have a good day."

"And you as well," Sebastian said cordially. There was little else to do.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

Thanks to Sebastian, I learn all sorts of interesting information about world history while making sure that this fic is on track. But anyone who has seen _Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shambala_ will be at least familiar with the name of the society that is alluded to; I had entirely forgotten about its inclusion in FMA until I looked up the name and thought, "Wait, that sounds like something I've heard before, somewhere…" Needless to say, this will be going in a far different direction. Please enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

~greyrondo

**Smoke and Crimson, Chapter Nine**

The current Chancellor of Germany hadn't even been born yet when Sebastian first met Grell. That didn't make him feel old, but it was a rather curious way of the world pointing out to Sebastian just how much time had passed.

His father's name had been Alois and for the longest time, Alois had used his mother's maiden name as his own because the bloodline had gotten a little complicated. But that was nothing much, because everything else was a little complicated too. For example, there was the matter of just exactly how the Chancellor had survived for so long.

He had likely brushed shoulders with Grell in the Somme Offensive during World War I, but in the end he had only been wounded and thus, not worth Grell's time. Later, once he had transitioned from the battlefield to the beer hall, he attempted a coup and almost died twice: once by a bullet and once by his own hands, but neither were successful. He did, however, near-successfully commit political suicide by earning himself a ban on speaking in public. And this was all just before the Great Depression, while Sebastian had been wandering around the Caribbean and questioning his wardrobe choice of all black.

Unfortunately, the Great Depression had actually worked in the Chancellor's favor. The rest was highly propagandized local history. To say it was dumb luck would be giving far too much credit to the Chancellor; Sebastian wondered if the Chancellor's good fortune had perhaps more to do with a bargain.

It was important to note that the Chancellor had been mentored by Dietrich Eckhart, a member of a society that sounded suspiciously like the one Lilith had referenced when she had invited him to accompany Elizabeth and herself to Germany.

Truly, the more that Sebastian thought about it, it seemed that the loud-mouthed Chancellor of Germany known as Adolf Hitler had more to do with the events that had reunited—and separated—him from Grell in the first place than he had previously thought.

Well, if that just didn't make everything perfect. Sebastian felt a little uneasy; it was all fine and good for him to contemplate confronting his aunt, but the actual action of doing so required a little more thought. The more he could do behind the scenes, the better.

London was a little damp today, anyways. But when he closed his eyes for a moment of rest and thought, he felt something very faint tugging at him from across the English Channel.

This park bench was not the proper place to do this. Sebastian stood up, and started walking until he felt like he was in a place where he could begin introductions properly. He entered Hyde Park and leaned against a sore-looking old tree. It had seen more history than most of the trees around it; centuries ago, witches would have made their wands from its dropped branches. It was a good conduit for this sort of thing.

"Who are you…?" Sebastian murmured with a curious smirk as he closed his eyes. He could see his summoner before him, standing awkwardly as someone who had never successfully tread upon the astral plane before. He was German, in a black uniform with a curious little death's head on the cap. "That's an interesting armband you're wearing," he said conversationally, even though his only real thought towards it was if Grell would consider it tacky, as much as he loved red. But the subject made his summoner relax somewhat.

"It's the symbol of our party," Sebastian's would-be summoner explained with pride. "I have invited you here on behalf of the Grüppenfuhrer of the Schützstaffel, Heinrich Himmler. I come before you with a delicate problem, one which requires your counsel. I am only human, after all, and that which I desire for my people can only come to realization with advice from your kind."

"You go through all of this trouble merely to ask me for advice?" Sebastian chuckled. But he was annoyed by the fact that he had obviously been summoned by someone else's dog. "You're a confident one, I'll give you that. Still, I'm sure that some sort of arrangement can potentially be made. No promises yet, though. You've intrigued me, if nothing else. Why don't we continue our conversation in the material world? Don't move, it's far easier for me to come to you than the other way around, I'm sure."

The invitation was a grand one, Sebastian noted as he opened his eyes and saw the concentric circles and the pentagrams and the various minerals and crystals laid out like they were in the good old days. The only lights were candles. But there was the matter of where he was located in the grander scheme of things. Something was… off. That was the pleasant way of putting it. The tension didn't resonate with what was happening at the moment, but there was something dark and bloody in his summoner's eyes that hinted at what such a place wanted to become.

Because of this, we wanted to hear this dog of Herr Himmler describe this location in his own, human terms. "Now," Sebastian practically purred as he calmly stepped out of the circle and took a seat on a straight-backed chair. "Tell me: where am I?"

Sebastian was expecting an immediate response; he didn't get one. The human had gasped in something like indignant fright. "You aren't—" he stammered, "you aren't supposed to be able to do that—those marks are meant to bind you. I didn't summon you for negotiation, I—"

So that's what was perhaps going on. He hadn't been summoned for an agreement, he'd been summoned for servitude. There hadn't been a human who could pull off that sort of thing in centuries, at least not on a demon of Sebastian's ranking.

"Hush," Sebastian told him. "Don't worry, I don't bite. Answer my question, and I'll take a look at your work and tell you where you went wrong. For free."

As Sebastian perused the alchemical and esoteric scribblings, he was told that he was a guest of the Nazi party at _Konzentrationslager Dachau_. It didn't take long to find the one, single, incredible mistake.

And he sighed. "Before we go any further, I would like for you to tell me exactly what it is you hope to gain from this encounter."

"I desire," the human said with a voice that shed itself of it shaking, "I desire for the power over death that your kind possesses. As your summoner, I demand the power to exterminate from this earth the inferior races that plague the existence of my own, as well as other sub-humans who are unfit to contribute to the future generations. I will help breed a master race of superior humans for Germany's future."

Just what Sebastian had thought. This soul would not only disagree with him because of its cheap taste, he could kiss his chances with Grell goodbye if he even pretended to go along with such madness. The Great War had been one thing, but honestly. That, and this human didn't even know what he was doing in terms of the occult.

Sebastian took a moment to pause, and then cleared his throat. "What you intended to summon, from the sound of your request and the writing on the floor, was a Grim Reaper. But what you've done is possibly extend an invitation to Death, and nothing more. Instead, you summoned me."

"But if you—if you're not a reaper, then… then what are you?"

"He's a demon, of course," Sebastian heard over the sound of a book being snapped shut in the corner. "And what does that make you? A human who wants the power of Death without the duty that such power necessitates?"

Sebastian froze. His expression matched that of Heinrich Himmler's dog, albeit for very different reasons. A Grim Reaper had accepted the invitation, a Grim Reaper who spoke German with a distinct British accent.

"There are a lot of humans in this world, trembling soul. Most of them aren't German. You humans are just perfectly imperfect the way you are, no need for change. That's why there are people specifically designated to do the job you inadequately described, and who are a lot less disgusting about it than you."

There was the buzz of machinery. It was a sound that Sebastian was afraid he would never hear again.

"Justice is, after all, supposed to be blind. That being said, let me put this nicely: I'm not a good Grim Reaper. I'm a little biased… but that's part of my charm, don't you think?"

Grell might have been a little busy before Sebastian had arrived. But Sebastian didn't want to make any assumptions. The blood that splattered Grell from head to toe could have come from anywhere. Then again, as he watched Grell quickly pluck a scrap of scarlet fabric with a hint of a black and white pattern from the teeth of his chainsaw, he wondered if Grell had been here the entire time, just not in the room.

Really, the human shouldn't have wasted his breath calling out for help; there was no one around to hear him. He should have spent it pleading.

"What did he actually do?" Sebastian asked, looking down at the corpse.

"He was going to die," Grell sighed. "Brainwashed and shattered. I'll put in a word for him and the rest; they'll be put on hold in Heaven, be granted permission to watch this conflict as it unfolds. Depending on what happens and their souls' reaction to the aftermath, they'll be reassigned accordingly. Better he dies now without all of that blood on his hands like he wanted."

"There are some who wouldn't agree with that," Sebastian said lightly.

"I should hope so. Luckily, none of them are me. Hopefully the sight of his men slaughtered will influence Heinrich Himmler properly, before he moves his own plans into action. I made sure to make it look like it wasn't natural, the superstitious man he is… so I expect you'll be staying here, then. Well, good day—"

Grell's voice sounded far too much like an actor reading a script for the first time. "Where do you think you're going without me?" Sebastian wanted to know. "I think you owe me a conversation, at the very least."

Sebastian took it as a good sign that the chainsaw disappeared just then. He took it as an even better sign when Grell didn't move in reaction to the distance between them being closed by even, deliberate steps.

"Grell," Sebastian said slowly, as he pressed his thumb to the drop of blood running down the Grim Reaper's face. It smudged along his cheekbone like a wayward streak of rouge. "What ever will I do with you?"

But Grell was too absorbed in Sebastian's touch to respond. "Sebby, does this impress you? Have I brought you humor, pleasure, thought, any of that at all? Or am I once again distasteful to your sensibilities? Am I too coarse for you?" All of this was a sweet, loving murmur against Sebastian's hand.

Then he said plainly, "Sebastian, what are you doing here?"

"Standing in front of you?"

"No," Grell sighed and rolled his eyes. "In Germany. I don't care much for any reasons you might have as to why you're in a more specific location than that."

"Well then," Sebastian said, his voice clipped as he next pressed his thumb over Grell's lips, "you won't care much for my explanation, now will you? Because it has far more to do with me standing in front of you than it does with Germany. Even though I did have plans here, it would be a lie to say that they were not motivated wholly by you."

He felt Grell's lips tremble. "You're lying right now," he murmured against Sebastian's touch. But when Sebastian shook his head, he gave in. "Let's not have that conversation here, at least," Grell said softly, and Sebastian followed him along the astral plane to a small and cramped house in another city.

The wooden floors must have never been that nice, even when they were new. But they were a dark, reliable color, the kind that hid the signs of aging and stress fairly decently to an eye that didn't really want to search for such things anyways. Everywhere Sebastian looked, it seemed like he was staring at a sepia photograph of the place rather than the place itself. If it weren't for the fact that Grell was standing directly in front of him, Sebastian would be confident that he had taken a wrong turn.

"What do you want from me, Sebastian? Why won't you leave me alone? I'm sorry. Sebby, please…"

That was what Grell whispered when he sat down on the edge of a scuffed wooden chair, looking up at Sebastian with nothing less than blatant trepidation. A sliver of a white fang anxiously bit down on the pale red of his lips.

"Please don't hate me?"

"I could never hate you," Sebastian said. "For longer than about a month or so at a time, at least. Sacrificing your proximity for my safety is rather noble and romantic, but not at all practical. That being said, I am upset with you."

"Really?" Grell wanted to know. His shoulders drooped and he sat back a little. "I just wanted to—I was hoping that it… but I understand—"

"Incredibly, undeniably upset with you," Sebastian added. "Come on, we can't let you walk around soaked in blood like this," he said, and offered his hand. When he received a mistrusting and fearful look in response, he took Grell's hand in his.

"Sebastian…" Grell protested, his voice wilting even as Sebastian dragged him to his feet and pulled the Grim Reaper, straggling behind him, into the bathroom. As he ran the hot and cold water, trying for some sort of comfort between frigid and scalding, Grell said, "At least let me explain."

And without even waiting for Sebastian's response, he began. "It was supposed to be just for a little while. But then, I was hoping that it would take you longer to figure out that I had lied to you. When the archangels followed up our investigation, they refused to believe that you weren't involved. You know how angels can be," Grell sighed. "So it would have been best if you weren't around to even get accidentally… I mean, but now that you're here, I… are you really upset with me?"

There was something odd about the way Grell said it. Sebastian soaked a washcloth—of course it was red—through and turned to Grell. "A little. Not as much as you'd like, I'm sure," Sebastian laughed as he took off Grell's glasses and slowly, gently wiped away the Nazi blood.

It was supposed to be a joke.

"You want me to be angry with you," Sebastian said, keeping his voice painfully quiet as he absorbed the waiting look in Grell's gaze. He couldn't believe it.

"I just don't believe how calm you are about all of this…it's like you don't even care about anything I do to you, you just have one thing in mind and you don't even…I just want some indication that I have something to do with what's going on."

"So you think you should be punished? What do you think I am, an angel? God? Forgive me, but just can't comprehend in the slightest how you think that me hurting you would somehow validate how I—"

Sebastian glared down into Grell's wavering eyes. "No. Look at me, and don't you dare look away. Anger is not a form of love. I am angry with you right now, and right now, I do not love you, and I don't think I can unless you understand me."

"Wrath," Sebastian said slowly, heatedly, "is not love. It's just someone trying to prove that they can control you. It's an abuse of your love to get you to do what they want. It's manipulation. Do you think that's what I'm here for, that I'm a demon so the only way for me to make any sense to you is—Grell, I don't know where you learned that someone doesn't love you unless they're causing you pain. Do you understand what I'm saying to you, Grell?"

"Please let go of me, Sebastian," Grell said, his voice shaking. "Please just—please…"

"Grell, not until you answer me."

And they were trapped in silence.

"I get it," Grell snapped. Sebastian backed off more in surprise than anything else, and Grell moved to the side and bolted from the room before Sebastian could even think of a single thing to say.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

In this chapter, Grell overshares and Sebastian manages to dodge a question that he knows he should answer very, very soon; he also discovers Grell's true hair color. Please enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

~greyrondo

**Smoke and Crimson, Chapter Ten**

Sebastian ended up giving him about twenty minutes of space, because every time he moved in the direction of the door, he decided that what he had planned to say wasn't quite right just yet. In the end, he didn't have anything.

So Sebastian stepped lightly as he closed the back door behind him, keeping it a hair's breadth from completely shut. Then he dropped to his knees in front of Grell, who was sitting with his back propped up against the frame of the door, glaring daggers into an innocent-looking leatherbound journal with a skull in the top right corner.

Déjà vu? Oh, without a doubt.

"Don't ever speak to me like that again," Grell said, his voice crackling with fire. He snapped the book shut and it disappeared. "You don't have half a clue about how I've been treated in the past and as far as I now know, you're the last person I should tell."

"Grell," Sebastian said like an apology even though he didn't understand why an apology was owed. There was the obvious fact that he had hurt Grell's feelings, but why their conversation had hurt Grell was something beyond Sebastian, something he wanted to know. "What do you want me to do?"

"I thought you already knew," Grell responded with a bit of sass and a bit more of venom. "But if you're too tired to make entirely unfounded assumptions about what I'm thinking, let me tell you. I want you to go away. Go away and never come back," he insisted, but those last words were interrupted by the spark of tears.

"Telling me that you love me and that you don't love me is the same thing, because you think that I'll keep trying, don't you? I'm not an idiot, Sebby. I know that you're here because you think I'm a sure thing."

Grell glared at Sebastian. "You don't give a damn about me in particular, you just want someone who'll—I refuse to be loved by someone as a last resort! How desperate do you think I am?! If I'm not good enough for you, then don't try to turn me into something that suits your tastes. Just say so."

"I guess I'm not good enough for you then, either," Sebastian replied. "Nothing I do for your sake is good enough, because you're always so thoroughly convinced that—"

"What about me do you like, Sebastian?"

"I think I get it now," Sebastian said quietly. "This is about your vanity."

"No, it's not! Answer the question, Sebastian Michaelis. What is it about me, me specifically, that you like?"

And then Sebastian paused. It ended up being on the far side of the line between thoughtful and telling silence.

"You don't have an answer to that, do you?" Grell asked faintly. He gave a soft jagged sigh, and looked down at the dirt. "That's—that's perfectly fine, it just—it does have some, well, some necessary…I mean, it's a good thing to know beforehand, things like this are better placed out in the open so that both people know where the other is coming from, and…honesty is a good foundation for any—"

"I know what I don't like about you," Sebastian interrupted him. At that point, there were a few different things he could say. He picked the one that could get him in the most trouble. "You're always waiting for me to do something terrible to you."

"You're going to leave me," Grell said hollowly. "You're just going to screw me until you get tired of me and then abandon me."

"Why would I do that to you?"

"Why wouldn't you?" Grell insisted. "I tricked you, and then left you, and…"

And here they were again, back at the beginning of the conversation that had started this argument in the first place, if it could even be considered an argument. "I think—" Sebastian began, "I think you overestimate how much energy I would put into an effort motivated by revenge. Especially revenge on someone I love."

"Love?" Grell echoed emptily. He tried to move further back away from Sebastian, but failed when he found out he was already pressed against the wall. "You know how much I like that word."

"Because it's what you want, isn't it?" Sebastian wanted to know. "Get away from the wall; it hasn't done anything to deserve your embrace and I can't imagine it's all that skilled at returning it."

"Love isn't something I can have from you just because I want it!" Grell protested. "That would make me—and I'm fine right here, thanks."

"But if I loved you, then shouldn't I give you what you want anyways? And if love's what you want from me, then really, you're being nothing less than cruel to refuse me."

Grell shook his head. "I don't—I just don't—"

Whatever he was going to say just then was lost. The words were lost, at least. It wasn't hard to understand what Grell meant, not afterwards.

Sebastian quickly braced himself, but in the end he let Grell straddle him and press him into the ground with abandon and abstraction. He stared up and into the desperate sparks flying in Grell's eyes as they reflected back into Sebastian's crimson irises. Then Grell took off his glasses and set them aside in the scruffy grass, and his entire face was cast in shadow as the dim sunlight fractured through his scarlet hair.

It started with a kiss, one that Sebastian initiated. But eventually Grell's lips left his behind with the rough suggestion of a vampiric brush at his throat.

Grell's hands moved faster than Sebastian could keep up, with an edge of panic to them that, if anything, should have made Sebastian pleased. But he wanted to tell Grell to slow down, that it was all right, and no matter what delusion the years of solitude had formed in the Grim Reaper's mind, Sebastian wasn't going anywhere.

"You were everything that I wanted, Sebastian," Grell said, his voice cold as he settled back on his heels. He cradled his chainsaw in his arms, and then decided he wanted to put it somewhere different.

And then Sebastian had a thought, a simple one: 'oh my'. Which was understandable, considering that he couldn't think of a way to escape the currently-unmoving teeth of Grell's chainsaw, settled against his throat as it was. Decapitation was, at the moment, a very serious possibility. But divine intervention wasn't, and that was his only real option.

"It astounded me that you cared for your master, the soul you intended to devour better than—you had every ulterior motive in the world and nothing more; you were a brilliant actor, but here you are now, hardly even trying. I guess I would be only worth a fraction of your energy and talent to you."

And then Sebastian realized that he had never said it. Sebastian had somehow found every which way to use the right amount of words without saying them in the particular combination that Grell wanted most. Someone so entranced with poetry and words would have noticed that, for all the times that Sebastian had said the word 'love', he had still never actually said, "I love you". And someone expecting heartbreak would think it was on purpose.

"You were right, you know: I wanted you to hurt me. I wanted you to do something, anything that would shatter that façade of yours, as handsome as it is, and show me that there's some substance to your shine. I would have let you romance me afterwards, convince me that you were sorry. It would have been the best anyone's ever treated me."

"I'd like very much to offer my soul, Sebastian, but you don't want it. But with you here like this, you would have to take it if I forced it down your throat, wouldn't you?"

Sebastian's eyes grew wide. He didn't even pretend to understand what Grell meant, but it frightened him all the same, as much as the chainsaw blade resting on his collar.

"Here's a taste, my darling Sebby. Just around while you were sweetly drawing up a contract with the little boy that inadvertently orchestrated our meeting, I knew someone who wanted someone else with which to play, it didn't matter whom. But I didn't know that. I only knew that he didn't want me to touch him. Or kiss him. Even in private. If anything, he was even harsher towards me in public than he had been previously. And because he was my boss, I couldn't say anything."

Will? No. Absolutely not. Sebastian desperately tried not to imagine it. Unfortunately, after what Grell said next, he failed miserably.

"The first time, he—he tied my hands to the headboard, stripped me, and came inside of me. Then he freed me without saying anything, and he'd already started the hot water to rinse the smell of my skin off before I had even recovered. I thought it was me for the longest time, that I was the one that needed to be better, and he was the one suffering, waiting for me to… it was ridiculous—"

"If you're so desperate," Sebastian interrupted him, "for the absolute solace of knowledge of my love, as something in and of itself, there is nothing I can do to prove its existence to you. No, it's impossible for anyone, even myself, to prove that it inherently exists."

Grell sighed in disbelief, and then shook his head as he withdrew the chainsaw into the empty air. "I guess it's not every day that a demon's honest with someone…"

Sebastian reached for the buckle of Grell's trousers and pulled him down before he could do anything else. "But you can see the fire in my eyes when I stare at you," he said, his face only inches from Grell's as he wrapped one hand around the back of Grell's neck.

"You can feel me right now, pressing against you. You can smell my skin, and you can taste—whatever you'd like. And you can hear me and interpret those words, and understand me when I say that I love you. And I do love you. I'm sorry for what I said earlier. Are you listening to me, Grell? Or are you too busy searching for something wrong?"

"I'm a demon," he continued, "But so much for that. Does the archetypal image of a demon in your mind match the one lying below you? You're nothing like my picture of a Grim Reaper—and I wouldn't want you to be. Treating me like a demon would…"

"But you sound so much like a human."

"I—" Sebastian began, and then paused. His voice was paralyzed in his throat; no matter what he told it otherwise, it simply refused to budge. Even worse, the hand that had been gently stroking the base of Grell's neck froze and wouldn't move again despite various internal threats. He blinked, and he was astounded that he could do even that much.

"Sebastian?"

For what it was worth, that paralysis alone seemed to soften Grell more than anything Sebastian had said. As Sebastian attempted to gather himself together, Grell first stared at him for a very, very long time, and then shifted so that he lay beside Sebastian on the grass.

Grell bit his lower lip, stretching out the moment for a little. "I love most humans, I really do. I want to cradle their poor, frightened souls and tell them that it's all right, that death doesn't make them a mistake, or unimportant. But I can't. It's not what we do. You aren't a part of any of that, except for when you interfere with the human world. I don't have to love you—and there's nothing keeping me from doing it. And Sebastian, I think it's rather cruel that the word 'humanity' is reserved for humans. It's not fair to us, now is it?"

Where did this come from?

"Besides, how could I resist a face and body like yours? And you're such a romantic."

It took Sebastian a silent, strained moment to realize that this was what a real confession from Grell sounded like, or at least as close to a confession as Grell could get after putting everything that Sebastian never wanted to know about Grell's boss out for them both to know. During this entire time, Grell didn't look at Sebastian. He gazed steadfastly at the half-clouded mid-afternoon sky, as if the wavering sunlight would be enough to support him.

""Grell…I'm not going to do that to you. Use you. As much as I hate to be honest about this sort of thing, I would have done it decades ago, if I ever were to do so. Your opinion of me matters a little too much. That being said, somehow I don't think 'romantic' is the right word for it," Sebastian added lightly. Forcibly lightly, but it was the thought that counted.

"You can't tell me that after just talking about how I shouldn't let the word 'demon' define you—" Grell half-sang. "Maybe my definition of 'romantic' is just anything that you do. What then?"

So much for circular reasoning being a logical fallacy. "You're insane."

"You're welcome," Grell retorted, and then said suddenly, "Sebastian, I just killed thirty people. Thirty people who weren't supposed to die yet."

"Are you going to get in trouble?" Sebastian wanted to know.

"No. That's the worst part."

And then Sebastian didn't say anything at all; he just took Grell's right hand in his and, while Grell gave him a confused and reproachful stare, stripped the black leather glove and set it next to Grell's glasses. Grell was, after all, still in the clothes he had worn to butcher Heinrich Himmler's men.

"I must admit, I wasn't expecting it to be the red," Sebastian commented.

"What?"

"Your real hair color. I was entirely convinced it was the brown, but there you are," Sebastian said, holding up Grell's wrist.

"That's cheating!"

"Sorry, I'm a demon," Sebastian laughed.


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

Every so often, it's important to pause and think things through before moving forwards. Sebastian takes a moment to do this in this chapter, even though he encounters more possible problems for the future (and from unexpected places, too) than solutions. Please enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

~greyrondo

**Smoke and Crimson, Chapter Eleven**

There was only one thing that consumed Sebastian's thoughts, and despite appearances, it wasn't what Grell thought it was. But the two weren't exactly mutually exclusive, and this was one thing that Sebastian had no problem considering while multitasking.

"You know, you could ask me for a little help if you're so intent on undressing me."

"Is that what I'm doing?" Sebastian asked, purposefully absentmindedly.

"Well, all the buttons on my shirt were fastened when I sat down and now they're not, so yes, that's what I'd call it, but you're free to—"

Sebastian eased his palms under the rough cotton of the open shirt and over Grell's shoulders as he tilted his head and almost experimentally caught Grell's lower lip in a kiss before pressing his mouth directly onto Grell's.

"—call it what you like…" Grell murmured against Sebastian's lips. He watched with half-closed eyes as Sebastian's black nails stroked his arms.

Grell had, after all, asked a very good question. Why did Sebastian love him? Sebastian wanted to define the answer, even though he knew very well that he would have at least one, if not several.

Sebastian brushed Grell's scarlet hair behind the reaper's bare shoulders, and felt what little resistance remained collapse at the wet contact of his lips on Grell's throat.

As Sebastian abandoned the thought of being delicate, Grell's sighs became soft, wanting moans.

Did Sebastian love Grell because of the way that Grell, in anger or passion or anywhere in between, never once failed to remind Sebastian how much he had fallen for him? Was it the curious contradiction of a Grim Reaper who was nothing short of alive?

"Sebastian," Grell gasped, "just out of curiosity, what sort of demon are you?"

It was a distinct possibility, at least.

"Myself?" Sebastian smirked. "Nothing out of the ordinary, I'm afraid. Although to you, I'll be whatever sort of demon you want me to be. Any preferences?" he asked as he ran the tip of his finger over Grell's lips with just the slightest, barest touch.

"I'll take you as you are," Grell breathed. "Just—"

"Be gentle?" Sebastian laughed as he cupped Grell's chin in his hand.

"Don't you dare," Grell demanded as he framed Sebastian's face in both hands, clinging to Sebastian's hair. He shifted into Sebastian's lap with an untethered kiss that just barely stopped short of drawing blood.

That was perfectly fine with Sebastian.

Sebastian's answer couldn't lie in the simple details: the hushed warmth of Grell's skin like embers, the light taste of Grell's lips and tongue, the sinful softness of the nape of Grell's neck against Sebastian's fingertips. He didn't know about any of that until it was too late to listen to reason, after all.

"Sebby, you…" Grell said breathlessly. "Want me, don't you…"

With Grell perched over his lap like he was, Sebastian was frankly surprised that Grell hadn't noticed earlier. As Sebastian's hand followed the curve of Grell's backside, he reassured Grell with a strand of kisses that wrapped around his collarbone.

It took quite a while, but Sebastian finally managed to get Grell out of his blood-soaked clothes. They were definitely going to stain, something that Sebastian realized in disappointment as he let them fall to the wooden floorboards.

The suggestion in the back of Sebastian's mind that a small part of him might actually like taking care of the mercurial and somewhat irresponsible reaper unfortunately coincided with the trembling hesitation of Grell's hands at Sebastian's own half-open shirt collar. It was unfortunate because Sebastian's next thought as he stared down at Grell's shaking hands, was that the last time Grell had been naked for someone else had been far different from what Grell had in mind.

Sebastian could have sworn that Grell read his mind at that moment, because a flash of something trapped between defiance, determination, and resignation passed behind Grell's eyes as he forced his hands to be calm.

"I want you too, Sebastian," Grell whispered as he caressed Sebastian's shoulders and arms, and swept off Sebastian's white shirt.

Sebastian shifted as he buckled into Grell's touch, into the chain of successively more teasing nips at his skin from his throat to the inside of his upper thigh.

Ecstasy had very nearly shut Sebastian's eyes when he noticed something rather peculiar that he hadn't been given the chance to notice earlier. There, sitting on the small of Grell's back in plain sight, was something that Sebastian couldn't believe he hadn't seen before. Sebastian shifted to get a closer look, and he decided that what he thought he had seen was most definitely identical to what was actually there.

"What is this," Sebastian said, his voice trimmed with neutrality.

"I don't think I'm following you. What's what?"

"Why," Sebastian demanded, "is there a demon's contract on—on you?!"

He didn't recognize the seal as any demon's that he had seen before. But that meant that it had to be a demon with particular prowess, one that could afford to indulge in such whims and change their seal as they wished. And the placement was much less proper than Sebastian would ever choose. That meant it had to be someone along the lines of Belial, or maybe even Lilith herself.

"You didn't notice that before?" Grell said, his voice not nearly as panicked as Sebastian's.

"I think that's obvious."

The very thought of a Grim Reaper contracted to a demon, for whatever purpose, appalled Sebastian at his core. Partially because he didn't think it possible, and partially because any scenario, even the best ones he could think of, that entailed Grell contracting with a demon were enough to make him panic.

"Sebby, calm down. That's not a demon's contract," Grell insisted lazily. "Look closer. Or rather, don't. Look at it, but unfocus your eyes a little. Do you see the skull?"

Sebastian did so, certain that it was some kind of a trap. "I guess I do," he admitted, his voice deflated.

"That's what marks my soul as a Grim Reaper's, and what binds it to this body. Otherwise my soul would wander off on its own in my sleep to Heaven or Hell or Purgatory. Probably Purgatory," Grell wondered aloud. "I mean, if I'd been that good, I wouldn't have become a Grim Reaper, right?"

"Why is it placed there specifically?"

"Probably so that nobody would see it," Grell mused. "That's a place that tends to generally get covered up, no matter what we have to wear to pass as a human."

Sebastian sank back against the headboard. He was only there for a moment before Grell shifted his way into Sebastian's arms and almost innocently—if that could be possible—embraced Sebastian's naked waist.

"Don't worry, my chastity hasn't come close to being violated by any demon except you."

Sebastian didn't have a response to that. "What do you remember from your mortal life?" he asked as he caught Grell's chin and looked into his eyes.

"Nothing," Grell said. He'd said it perfectly normally, which was what had caught Sebastian's attention: it was suspicious. "I mean—I have dreams. But they're not about me; they're about the lives of the souls I collect. Some I forget about entirely, but others I see every so often. A few I dream about every night."

And with that, Grell pulled away. "I see Angelina in my dreams every night," he murmured.

"I'd been meaning to ask what you had done with Madam Red's coat, since you don't seem to have worn it in a few decades," Sebastian responded softly. And he had been. But quite honestly, he'd never been able to think of a good way to bring such a subject up and until recently, he wouldn't have been anywhere near Grell to be able to initiate such a hypothetically strange conversation in the first place. "Did it just go out of style?"

"Eventually, I suppose. But I gave it back to her. I was just holding onto it for her while her paperwork got processed, and it took about a year to get her seal in order and her scythe forged and everything."

Funny. From the way that Grell said that and what he had mentioned, it sounded suspiciously like Angelina had become a Grim Reaper herself. But Sebastian must have heard something wrong. "Wait just a moment, are you telling me that Madam Red is now a Grim Reaper?"

"Well, she was a rather nice person until the end, and she had seen her fair share of death in life and that's one of the things that they look for when considering new reapers. I'd known beforehand, of course. You really don't think I'd ordinarily kill a slew of prostitutes just for fun, do you?" Grell looked genuinely hurt.

Absolutely.

"No," Sebastian reassured him. "Just a squad of Nazi soldiers."

"I suppose I should have had more of a problem with that than I did. No, Angelina's victims would have died anyways and instead of me, you would have met a terribly uncouth and boring fellow who wouldn't have been nearly as attractive as me. If I hadn't interfered, Angelina would have been one of them. Instead, I played along and hoped for something to come along and remind her of her humanity—and that something was her nephew, your former master."

There was a strange pause after that. But then Grell seemed to notice it, and continued as if nothing had happened. "Anyways, if she had killed him, then she would have gone straight to Hell, no two ways about it. I was afraid that it was only temporary, so I killed her before her soul had a chance to turn back on itself. There's quite a long bit of study and time working in the office before you're sent out to the field, but I think she's almost ready to start training. I wonder who she'll end up with; I trained with Will but—"

"But I can see that there would be some problems with that arrangement," Grell said quietly. "After everything I told her. I mean, it wouldn't have any reflection on him as a professional, but having a perspective on that sort of thing is something rather hard to ignore..."

So Ciel's aunt recalled everything about her former life, but Grell didn't remember a thing? That was either very convenient or a lie, one that Sebastian had caught a little too easily. So it either wasn't a lie, or it was a lie of which Grell wanted Sebastian to be aware.

Could this be a reason why Sebastian loved Grell? As much aggravation it caused him—to say the least—Grell never once allowed Sebastian to stop thinking. He was a beautifully complicated puzzle and Sebastian didn't expect to ever become bored of him.

One day I'll tease your human life out of you, Sebastian thought as he embraced Grell from behind. He was sure that it wouldn't disappoint him.

"Can we go back to—oh, never mind," Grell sighed then, and sat up a moment before pulling away from Sebastian. "Someone's going to die. I'll be back. Wait for me, my love?"

Before Sebastian could reply, Grell kissed him with all the weight of a candle flame, and disappeared into the next room. Sebastian guessed it was so that Grell would look halfway decently clothed when reaping the unfortunate souls of Munich. They had no idea what they were in for.

Maybe that was why Sebastian loved him. There was a good chance, anyways.


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: I don't own any previously copyrighted material. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, etc.) does belong to me.

In this chapter, Sebastian reminisces on the chain of events that led him to Ciel—and Grell—in the first place. Please enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

~greyrondo

**Smoke and Crimson, Chapter Twelve**

For all of the effort that Grell had put into telling Sebastian to 'wait' for him, he had dragged himself through the front door about an hour and a half later with barely enough energy to do much of anything. Sebastian had carried him to bed.

"What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Grell mumbled into Sebastian's sleeve (Sebastian had dressed himself after deciding that lounging about as naked as Grell had left him would be somewhat improper).

"Really?" Sebastian asked, as he set Grell down and loosened Grell's tie.

"Humans are idiots," Grell said as he turned onto his side, facing away from Sebastian. "They really and truly are. When are they going to understand that the afterlife doesn't care about the peculiarities through which they carried out their prayers? They're all the same."

Sebastian didn't have anything to say to that, except that he agreed. "Go to sleep," he said softly, and absentmindedly stroked Grell's hair as he began to think. Once again, it was time to interfere far too much in the going-ons of humans.

Humans scuffling in wars stemming from the particularities of their religions were hardly new to Sebastian. Especially considering that they were partially the reason that Sebastian decided to take more interest in his diet in the first place.

"Sebby?" Grell murmured. "Thank you."

"What for?" Sebastian chuckled.

"For being here when I came back. Hold me?"

The effervescence with which Grell had asked made Sebastian want to laugh, but the iron solemnity of what Grell had said first was too heavy. So he sat back and gathered Grell into his arms, even though Grell was already mostly there by the time he had finished speaking. Eventually, Grell's chest ceased to rise and fall, and Sebastian knew that he had fallen asleep.

If Sebastian could somehow stop his aunt, undo what she must have already done, and prevent the war that his previous master was afraid of and Grell was likely silently dreading, then it would be the first time that Sebastian's intervention in human affairs would benefit them on a grand scale.

No, that wasn't true. He had done some good for a small part of humanity under Ciel. He supposed it all depended on who his master was at the time, and what he or she wanted. Something as poisonous and earth-shaking as vengeance that could move the entire world, or something as humble as a mother's love or simple wish for survival, that could move the world just as well.

It wasn't until fairly recently—a few centuries ago—that Sebastian even cared about what sort of master to whom he might swear himself. And interestingly enough, the only one still around who had caught a glimpse of the former Sebastian was none other than William T. Spears.

He supposed that it really, truly began with Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of King Henry VIII. The marriage—or annulment—that challenged the religious world at that time. Catherine of Aragon wanted, more than anything else, for the child growing in her womb to one day become the ruler of England. Not that Sebastian needed to be reminded of King Henry VIII's obsession with having a male heir, because that would come into play only a few years later.

Back then, Sebastian was gluttonous, changing his form as often as necessary to devour as many souls as possible. But he was also patient: it was the calm before the storm of insatiable madness. He had promised Catherine of Aragon that the child inside of her would become the ruler of England one day, in exchange for her soul. That child was a little girl named Mary.

And then there was that fuss with Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and soon there was another wife of Tudor begging for her child to be the one to wear the crown. As Sebastian was at that time still waiting for the proper time to consume Catherine of Aragon's soul, he was less lenient with Anne Boleyn. He received her payment after her beheading following the birth of her daughter, Elizabeth.

His impatience became apparent, especially considering that Jane Seymour paid him before she had even recovered from the birth of her son, Edward. And he kept his promises, in his own way. King Edward VI died when he was about fifteen. At least Sebastian recalled that it was something along the lines of fifteen: his ghost remained at court for so much longer, he lost track.

At first, Edward didn't understand. A ghost doesn't quite see the blood-soaked body he leaves behind. It was consumption, if Sebastian's memory served him right. The roses of the house of Tudor were white with red because they were watered with blood, in one way or another. Edward even had the Tudor red hair, as red as his half-sister Elizabeth's famous hair.

King Edward VI was also Protestant like his half-sister Elizabeth, and unlike Catholic Mary, making the business of inheritance quite complicated. He personally witnessed the torture inflicted on Edward's fragile human soul, upon realizing that naming his cousin Lady Jane Grey as his successor upon his deathbed led to her own. Witnessing his much-loved half-sister Elizabeth sealed in exile as Mary ascended to the throne certainly affected him as well.

Put simply, Sebastian had quite a lot of fun tormenting the child ghost while he waited. He didn't deny it, but he wasn't the only one to drive him insane. The other was his half-sister Mary. As kingly of an education as Edward VI had, no amount of study could prepare him sufficiently for the burnings that made Mary such an infamous queen.

Catherine of Aragon attempted to renege on their contract. She insisted that her soul be judged, not devoured. If her soul was so determined to be judged, then Sebastian suggested she place the weight of those eventually burned in Queen Mary's religious fervor on her soul, and it would be freed from their contract.

She accepted Sebastian's proposal, and he accepted the feast in return. Just as the contract that made her daughter the Queen of England had been marred, Mary's place in history would forever be dominated by the shadows cast by the ashes of her fires.

But all this time, Sebastian had begun to have startling, frightening thoughts about his own actions. It wasn't right for a demon to be ashamed of the state of his gluttony and depravity: the souls he had consumed from Mary's fires had not drawn contracts with him but he had eaten them all the same. Tormented with self-disgust as he was, he still had one more obligation to fulfill. One more Tudor child still had to take the throne.

So even though he wanted nothing more than to retreat to the bowels of hell and leave behind the raw threads of his interference in England, he waited and took his frustrations out on the child ghost, teasing and tormenting it until he grew bored.

The last time he had seen the ghost of Edward VI, it had been on the eve of Elizabeth's coronation. A stern Grim Reaper in winter's brown, carrying a plain scythe with a worn wooden handle, caught Sebastian's eyes with a piercing, acidic glare as he led the ghost away.

After Elizabeth took the throne, Sebastian retreated to Hell and starved himself of such untethered senseless desire for centuries, until it was with incredible weakness that he formed a contract with the young, orphaned Earl Phantomhive. But even then, he never forgot the look in that reaper's eyes.

That reaper had been a younger and much more impressionable William T. Spears. And even Sebastian knew he had made just enough of a wrong impression—stealing the souls of the more than two hundred and eighty Protestants who had burned by Mary's orders— for Will to carry a refined, cultivated hatred for demons to this day.

But here Sebastian was now, without a master and doing no great harm to the world for the lack of one.

Sebastian wondered how young of a reaper Grell was. He didn't want to be the one to tell Grell that whatever he had experienced before returning home that night was only an encore of what had been done before, but he wondered why such an obvious fact for those who dwelled in humanity's afterlife had somehow skipped over Grell entirely.

Then again, if Sebastian succeeded, then that was a conversation he wouldn't need. For a little while. Maybe longer, depending on just how Sebastian went about being successful.

But there was a catch to that. The solution—the larger solution, not just the immediate solution that would bandage the world this one time—had already been figured out by someone else. That someone was his aunt. And her specific methods were the immediate problem.

Promoting fascism in Europe, while effective in finding a substitute conduit for humanity's fervor, was simply not the calmest way to go about reducing humanity's bloodthirsty perception of the influence of God in the world.

Then again, the alternative—the calm way—was angels' work. True angels' work. That violent wayward thing that set London aflame had likely fallen from the grace of God before Sebastian had even met it for the first time. It was no better than Lilith.

How did Sebastian feel about doing the work of an angel? Not so well, so he decided to focus on the first step. Before anything else, he would need to have an important discussion with his aunt. It wouldn't do any harm to further analyze her methods and influence in the human world up until this point, either.

Hadn't Grell been reading something strange just before the night he had been attacked by Lilith? His aunt wasn't just a seductress of the flesh; that only got a demon so far. A demon of his aunt's caliber knew how to seduce the mind, as well. The written word was a beautiful snare for humans of a certain character. Ever so gently, he set Grell down on the sheets and pulled the covers over him.

What Sebastian found a few short minutes later wasn't the original copy; he supposed that cheaply printed volume had fallen apart years ago. But the fact that Grell had replaced it, and collected the philosopher's other works as well, was the clue that Sebastian had been seeking to confirm. If anyone was particularly skilled at reading too well into spoken and written words, Sebastian didn't doubt that it would be Grell.

As he flipped open the first page of the earliest dated book, Sebastian knew that the problem wouldn't be that the text was in German. There was a wholly different problem facing him: Grell had written extensive notes along the margins and even between the lines of text. This would have saved Sebastian a great deal of time, if Grell's handwriting wasn't such an ornate cursive that Sebastian found it entirely illegible.

He sighed to himself and started from the beginning.


End file.
